'Jesus. What happened to you?'
Mickey was looking at me through the narrow slit that his door chain allowed. I must have looked pretty bad: bloodied face, dirty clothes, disheveled hair. I've come here straight from where the Protectors left me, not bothering to go home and wash away the signs of my encounter with Mitchel.
'Open the fucking door, Mickey.'
He hesitated for a moment, and then unfastened the chain, letting me inside.
Mickey was wearing an old t-shirt with some furry cartoon character and pajama bottoms. He looked like he had just got up from bed.
'Why didn't you answer my messages?'
He locked the door behind me and gave me a guilty look.
'Sorry. Fucking Protectors dragged me out in the middle of the night for some bullshit test. After that, I got paranoid. Kept radio silence.'
Something dawned on him, and he said:
'Wait... was it him who did this to you? That asshole, Mitchel?'
Interesting. He gave Mickey the same name he gave me. It would make sense, really. If Protectors had multiple wards, inventing a new name for each one would be a pain. They probably just rotated the names every few days.
'What did the Protector called herself?'
'Corey.'
'And before that, the last time you saw her?'
'Uh... Carol.'
Interesting.
'That was the day before we met, right?'
'Yeah. So, they talked to you too?'
Looks like my theory was right. With everything that happened, I should have been either angry or terrified, but I actually felt a strange elation. Two pieces of information about her in one day. I was in luck.
'Yes, it was Mitchel. Bastard decided to teach me a lesson.'
Mickey's face went red.
'That fucker! That goddamn piece of shit dirty cunt!'
He clenched his fists.
'I'm going to fucking fry his brains! Squeeze them out through his nostrils!'
I sighed.
'That's great. Can you get me some ice or something? This shit hurts.'
While he was doing that, I went to the bathroom and tried to clean myself up as well as I could. My nose wasn't broken, and it didn't look like there was going to be a noticeable bruise. Not considering the pain, it was like the assault never happened. Figures. Mitchel would know how to leave no marks on his victims.
Back in the living room, with an ice compress on my face, I compared notes with Mickey. Like me, he was taken by the two foreign agents to the service depot, where Mitchel and the Protector interrogated him about the hospital fire. He didn't tell them anything about me or Zero. He didn't get hit by Mitchel, either, although the bastard scared him pretty good.
'I'm not a great liar, but I'm great at coming off as an impulsive moron.' Mickey said. 'I think they both decided that I'm too simple to make fools out of the two of them. Idiots.'
I smiled and then winced a little.
'So what does it all mean?'
He scratched the back of his head.
'Well... someone has torched the hospital, and they're not sure who.'
'But it was someone, right? Not just an accident?'
Mickey laughed.
'Oh yeah. It was someone alright.'
'How can we be sure?'
He was silent for a few seconds and then grinned.
'Because I went there and checked.'
I looked at him, stunned.
'You did what now?'
'After the fuckers let me go, I went straight to the hospital.'
'Are you insane?!'
'That is a very intimate question to ask a wraith, you know.'
'What the fuck, Mickey? Do you understand how dangerous it was? What if they were monitoring the hospital? What if you were caught?!'
He scowled.
'Matthew, I'm not an idiot. I was careful. No one has seen me. I disabled the cameras before going in, too. Everything is under control.'
That damn fool. I didn't know whether to be angry at him or impressed by him.
'So... do you want to know what I saw?'
I nodded, slowly.
'It wasn't no fucking shirt circuit, man. The whole place looks like an inferno. The walls fucking melted. Just like at the railroad museum. And the fire started exactly where the PA office is... was. Like, in the middle of the test chamber, probably.'
He shook his head.
'I've never seen anything like it, Matt. They said on the news that no one died, but fuck, how would they even know? It's all just ash and soot now.'
I sat there, thinking.
'If someone did die, we wouldn't be having this conversation. We would be halfway to the Farm already.'
I remembered the white bandage on the Protectors hand. Was she there when the fire started?
"A.T.". Her initials. What was her name? Amanda? Alice? Abigail?
'Yeah, you're right. They would have rounded up all of us, C6 and higher, and not just for a pleasant talk with Mitchel.'
Mitchel. His presence was a clue in on itself.
'So what does that asshole doing here? I got the impression that he and the Protector don't like each other very much. Which means that she didn't summon him here.'
Mickey shrugged.
'Well, this is kind of obvious. The Bitch is the local authority, she's in charge of keeping an eye on us. Now, if Zero did indeed broke out from the Farm, he would be pursued by the guy who either let him escape in the first place or who specializes in hunting people.'
He was right. I continued his thought:
'So, Mitchel is here for Zero. He comes to the city, to the Protector, with the news that there's a symptomatic ex-PA wraith of unknown power somewhere in her territory, complete with a pack of stolen Farm case files. That's why she was walking around with that photo, checking if Zero had approached any of us.'
'So... what happened next?'
I wish I knew.
'I have no idea. But they must know what Zero is capable of, at least approximately. So, logically, they would suspect that it was him who set the hospital on fire. But they had to check every strong wraith in the city, just to be sure.'
'But why would Zero attack the PA? He's hiding from them!'
'I don't know.'
There was so much that I didn't know. And this was exactly why I needed to find Zero, to talk to him. I desperately needed some answers, not just about my mom. About everything.
'Listen, Matthew... this thing is getting pretty dangerous. Now that we both looked the Bitch in the eye and lied to her, it's not just a misunderstanding. It's a malicious conspiracy to shelter a genetically altered person in the late stages of the Disease. That shit is punishable by death, man.'
He leaned in and looked me in the eye.
'I will understand if you decide to bolt. No shame in that. We all want to live, right? I'll figure something out myself.'
It was kind of sweet, seeing him swallow his principles to give me a graceful way out. I knew that, for him, giving someone up to the PA was worse than death. But he didn't want me to feel pressured into anything I wasn't ready to sign up for.
But I was, I was ready. The thought of letting someone be taken by the PA made me sick. I wasn't going to allow that to happen. Not again.
'Thanks, Mickey. But you won't get rid of me that easily.'
A broad, childish smile appeared on his face.
'Never doubted you, man.'
He looked at me, pleased.
'So... uh... what do we do now?'
I looked at him and sighed.
'Now? Now we go party.'