“I don’t think so,” he said. Connor already looked distracted and headed back to the comfort of his chair again. “I’ve got to think about this visitor of mine…”

Something in me let go and I lunged for him. Connor had more fighting experience than I did, but with his mind off in its own little world, I grappled him around the shoulders with ease. Up close, the stink coming off of him was the kind you found only on the homeless in New York, but I was too pissed to back off.

“Let go of me, kid,” Connor said, struggling. “Don’t make me write you up for insubordination.”

“Oh, but you’re not on Departmental time, remember?” I said, tightening my grip. “You’re off the company clock.” I clamped down around Connor’s shoulders, slipping my arms up around his neck in a modified sleeper hold. “So technically I’m not strangling my work partner; I’m just strangling a friend.”

“Some friend,” Connor choked out and pushed the two of us across the room until I hit his sofa and sat down hard. Connor used the momentum and leveraged himself into a standing position, but I didn’t let go and stood up with him.

“Jane’s missing because we were trying to help you,” I said, trying to reason with him.

“I didn’t ask you for that,” Connor said, all accusatory. “I didn’t ask anyone to put themselves at risk for me.” Connor shrugged, despite my grip on him. “If Jane had been following Departmental protocol, she wouldn’t be in this situation.”

“What the hell has gotten into you?” I said. My arms were burning from keeping up the pressure on him. I didn’t know how much longer I could hold on. “There are things out there more important than our day job!”

“Like family?” Connor said, his teeth grinding.

“Look, I’m sorry we never found your brother,” I said, pushing him away from me. I fell back on the couch and Connor rolled across the floor until he hit the back of one of his movie chairs. I stood up. “But Jane is practically my family. She’s all I have, the only truly good thing to come out of having this ‘gift’ of mine. Aidan’s in the past, the long past. We can’t do anything about him now, but we can help Jane. I’m not asking you as your partner in Other Division; I’m asking you as a friend.”

Connor stood, taking his time to rise. I hated beating on him in this condition, but nothing else seemed to be getting through to him. He rolled his shoulders back, giving off an audible popping sound.

“Jesus, kid, I take a little time off and you go and grow a pair…” He rubbed his jaw, pausing his hand as if he really felt the scruff of his beard for the first time. Favoring his right leg and limping with his left, Connor crossed to a mirror hanging on the wall and stared into it for a good long time as if he didn’t recognize the man looking back at him. When he finally turned away from it, he lowered his eyes and said, “All right. Let’s go.”

He turned and headed for his front door.

“Dude,” I said, stopping him with a single word.

Connor looked back at me. “What?”

“You can’t go out like that,” I said. “You stink. You’re covered in bits of grass and mud from the graveyard, and there’s still dried blood caked in your hair and beard. I think you might want to clean yourself up a bit before we attempt to infiltrate the Gibson-Case Center.”

Connor went back to the mirror and looked again. “Heh,” he said. “You know, I was so surprised to see the beard I didn’t really notice anything else.”

“Feel free to take a quick shower,” I said. “I don’t want us getting kicked out because they think you’re there begging for change.”

Connor nodded and headed off to his bathroom in a slow shuffle. I hated seeing him this disheveled. I needed him as sheveled as possible.

While he showered, I fought the urge to pace nervously by busying myself cleaning up his apartment a little. I was glad I had my gloves on, not to keep my powers from triggering but to keep whatever new life-forms that were growing in here from harming me. Most of the pizza boxes had odds and ends of pizza left in them, some of which I dubbed former pizza, as it seemed to have developed into a new phase of life. The contents of just that filled two giant trash bags and I left them tied off by Connor’s front door, next to one singular floor-to-ceiling tower of now-empty pizza boxes. After a nose-centric hunt around the theater area, I discovered several bowls of milk that looked well on their way to being cottage cheese and brought them into his kitchen. I gave them a quick rinse as I breathed through my sleeve in an attempt not to gag, and then loaded them into the dishwasher.

I was throwing two of his windows open to air the place out when he came back down his hall. I turned to him. Connor looked much better than he had. For one thing, his sandy blond hair was neat, his beard gone, and he was dressed.

“You look almost human,” I said, “and you shaved.”

Connor rubbed his chin again. “Feels weird now,” he said, “but I have to say, I feel strangely liberated.”

“You look good. With your face shaved and no more blood in your hair, there’s only the slight swelling around the eyes that make you look a little Stay Puft.”

Connor spied his trench coat where I had hung it neatly over the back of one of the chairs. His eyes looked up from it and took in the rest of the room. He whistled.

“Jesus, kid. I feel like I should tip you or something.”

“Yeah, well, I left my biohazard suit at home or I would have done more,” I said, motioning toward the front door. Connor headed for it, much more prepared for the outside world than before. “You want to give me a real tip? Help me figure out what happened to Jane.”

Connor nodded. “I’ve got a few things I’d like to figure out as well.”

12

We hurried back to the Gibson-Case Center, entering the atrium by the same main doors that Jane and I had used. I started across the lobby, but stopped when I noticed Connor was not at my side. I turned to find him standing near the glass doors leading into the place, leaning against one of the panes next to them. I walked back to him. His skin had a slick sheen of sweat to it and his complexion was sickly.

“You okay?”

Connor nodded between heavy breaths. “It’s amazing how the body atrophies when you’re out of the game for a month, kid.”

“Funny,” I said. “I thought it might have been the beating you took in the graveyard.”

Connor laughed out loud, a nervous, unsteady sound coming from him. He may have been cleaned up, but there was still something manic and off with him that I found disturbing. “Did that really happen? I thought I dreamt all that.”

I wasn’t sure if he was being serious or not. Right now wasn’t the best time to test his mental stability. I needed him focused.

“Let’s take it easy, then,” I said, although every bit of my being was screaming to go find Jane and help her as quickly as I could. I put my shoulder under his right arm and helped him across the crowded garden and shopping area of the atrium until I found the kiosk where Jane had disappeared.

“This the spot?” he asked, circling it in long, slow steps.

I nodded.

Connor looked at the directory menu on the display. He rapped his knuckles on the glass. Bending over, he cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted into the touchscreen area. “Hello? Anybody in there?”

I watched him with a creeping sense of horror coming over me. Maybe he wasn’t in the best state of mind to help me with this.

“I don’t think she can hear you,” I said, looking around. A few of the people passing by were staring at us.

“You sure about that, kid?” He stood up, his face serious and looking a bit more like the Connor I knew.

“Well, no,” I said. My face turned red, the blood rushing to it. I felt like an idiot. “I’m not sure about anything right now.”