He narrowed his eyes a little.
“How?”
“She’d been experimenting down there. All those bodies? She’d been working hard on something totally different from the burn virus, and she’d figured it out, too. She even infected me with it.”
“With what?”
“It grows inside you,” I told him. “It eats you from the inside out, and then it takes your place. If Ava hadn’t removed it in time…”
I looked in his eyes for some kind of sign of what he might be thinking, but I couldn’t tell. He still looked serious.
“It takes your place,” he said. “What takes your place?”
“A haan,” I said. “I think the scaleflies are spreading it. I think they’re turning people into haan.” When he didn’t say anything, I grabbed his arm and stammered, “It’s true, I know it sounds crazy but it’s true.”
“If Ava removed it,” he said, “then how—”
“The little girl you rescued,” I told him. “And the old man you dropped her off with. They were both haanyo ng.”
“Cocoons,” he said, sounding out the Mandarin. “For the haan?”
“All these disappearances,” I said. “These people that have gone missing… it has to be them.”
“According to security, the mass disappearances aren’t a real thing, Sam.”
“But they are.”
“If they are, someone high up is keeping it out of the official records. The numbers are statistically a little higher than some years, but not enough to call it a mass disappearance.”
“But all the signs, the posters of missing people…”
“People disappear in Hangfei every year,” he said, his voice low. “Besides, you just said these haan take the place of people. The people you’re talking about are missing—”
“The new haan are off the grid, Dragan.”
“So?”
“So they have to eat something.”
“They—” He stopped, and for a second he looked at me like I might be crazy. He didn’t say it, and he tried not to show it, but not before I saw. He saw me see, and the look faded just as fast as it appeared. He sighed, and grew thoughtful.
“I never found that girl. I looked, but… I was never able to find her. She didn’t go back to the Pan-Slav Emirates, and she wasn’t processed at any detention center. Same goes for the guy I left her with… it’s like they both vanished.”
“I’m telling you she’s here, in the city,” I said, lowering my voice to a whisper. “Her and the old man both.”
He looked at me, his eyes serious, but uncertain.
“You’ve seen them?”
“I…”
There were a few times, now, when I thought I’d seen the girl, glimpsed that bush of blond ringlets so out of place on the Hangfei streets from out of the corner of my eye. I thought I’d seen her, maybe.
When I didn’t answer, he patted my shoulder a little. Not to make fun of me, but to let me know it was okay. He gestured at the TV, which still showed footage of the Xinzhongzi protests. More had come to join the people that had held their ground during the riot, and it looked like the crowd had doubled. They filled the square, bleeding out to cover every sidewalk and fill every alley while walls of officers with shields tried to contain them. A forest of handmade signs stuck up over the expanse of heads and waving arms while security aircars hovered low, monitoring the crowd.
“It’s only a matter of time before something else sets them off,” he said. “It’s getting ugly out there. If they knew half of what you and I know, it would be much worse.”
“Do you believe me?”
He stared at the screen.
“I know what the haan are capable of,” he said, not looking at me. “I knew that back before I even met you.”
“But do you believe me?”
“You know that footage you showed last night, when you said the haan were buying people from meat farms—”
“Dao-Ming is the one who—”
“I know, she told me,” he said. “And she’s right.”
“Really?”
“I knew it, too. Way back, that night when I found you in the processing plant, I saw one of them.”
“A haan?”
He nodded. “I think it must have been Sillith. I saw her buy three kids. On my way in, I stumbled on them, but I was so preoccupied with finding you…”
“Oh.”
“I knew it, and I just let it go,” he said, still watching the TV. “She told the butchers she was buying their freedom.”
“She didn’t save them,” I said.
He nodded. “I know what she did.”
“Dragan, I—”
“Do you have a plan?” he asked. “Don’t say what it is for now. Just tell me yes or no.”
“I think so.”
“Yeah?”
“It’s something big.”
“It would have to be. We’ll talk about it later. Okay?”
I nodded. On the feed, the mob screamed and shook their fists. “Gohan really doesn’t see what’s going on out there, does he?”
“He doesn’t care. He’s a fanatic, that’s what worries me.” He frowned at the footage. “He’s the one stirring that pot. One man. He’s dangerous. If Alexei—”
“Alexei will come around,” I said. “I couldn’t have been in much better shape when you took me in.”
“I’d have worried about you, too, if you’d fallen in with a cult,” he said. “You were vulnerable, then. He’s vulnerable, now. The way Gohan has latched onto him… I don’t know what his game is, but something’s not right there. He’s playing at something, and he’s dragging Alexei, and all those protesters, and even the haan into it.”
“What are you going to do?”
He didn’t answer. The footage on the screen changed to display the foreign military buildup offshore, which seemed much closer these days. Even with the haan defense screen active those warships and the submarines lurking beneath them had enough missiles on board, both nuclear and conventional, that no one could be comfortable of the outcome should they up and attack. If they did that, the haan ship, safe behind its force field, might be the only thing left standing, defense shield or no.
“All haan might pay the price for what some haan have done,” he said instead.
“Huh?”
“You told me once that Nix said that to you, before he died.” He looked tired as he watched the foreign ships on the screen.
“They’re coming,” I said, pointing toward the TV, “because the haan can’t influence them from so far away. They can see.”
Dragan looked down at me, meeting my eye.
“I’ll help you.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“Then you believe me?”
“I believe in you.”
It was close enough. I hugged him, and he squeezed my shoulders. A scalefly flitted between us, and he waved it away.
“I’m still on duty,” he said. “I have to go. Vamp’s waiting in the lobby, he’ll take you home.”
“Cool.”
“Get some rest, and take it easy for a while. Don’t say anything else about this until you talk to me, okay?”
“Okay.”
He gave me one last squeeze, then got up and headed for the exit.
“See you, Sam.”
“See you.”
When he opened the door, I could see down the hall where Dao-Ming stood. As Dragan began to approach her, she noticed me, and gave me a wave over his shoulder before the door closed again. I sat there on the bed a while longer, after he’d left, and thought about what he’d said.
“All haan might pay the price for what one haan has done….”
I looked in the 3i tray, and the list of contacts there. I’d kept Nix’s. I don’t know why, but I hadn’t been able to bring myself to delete it. It stayed gray, as always, but it reminded me of him. He’d always been the one haan I could look at and say, for absolute sure, that they had at least some good in them. Even with all the lies, and the manipulation, and the back room deals, the haan had some good in them.