The Hickey on the Swan's Neck

Evelyn was staring at the blinking infrared light in the vent when Lucas' canine teeth pierced her bruised collarbone. The ventilation system in this safe room is based on the drawings of the chemical plant in 1997, and every 15 minutes it emits a buzzer similar to the one before the gas leak.

"Your heart beats 12 times per minute slower than last week." The FBI agent's wet blond hair brushed across a tattoo of a barcode on her chest, the number of a Columbia University medical experiment. "When they used truth serum on serial killers in Baltimore prison, their pupils didn't contract the way you do."

Evelyn flexed her knee into her partner's crotch, only to have Lucas predictably slam his sidearm into his thigh artery. The flak jacket was clinging to the still-healed whiplash on her back, and the pain caused her retina to briefly visualize the combination to Daniel's office safe, which she had written in lipstick on the mirror of the police bathroom this morning.

"Failed the third polygraph." Lucas handcuffed her wrist to the heater, and the metal thud startled the crows perched outside the window. "Do you want me to play the recording of you at Daniel's bedside last night? The gasp of the climax is mixed with Morse code, too bad the fool only understands the rhythm of the physical collision."

Light bulbs burst in the safe room. Evelyn presses the blade of her tongue against his carotid artery in the dark, an autopsy tool stolen from the medical examiner's office: "When you changed my birth control pills, didn't you find the cyanide formula on the back of the foil?"

Moonlight shines through the shutters, cutting bar-code-shaped shadows across their tangled bodies. Lucas suddenly bites the burn scar on her right shoulder, and the locator chip buried under the skin emits a sharp buzz. The tiny transmitter implanted in his wrist three hours ago started burning up, which means Daniel's Mercedes is pulling into a gas station three blocks away.

"Do you know why you were chosen to go undercover?" He licked away the beads of blood seeping from behind her ear, where Daniel's ring had cut her the night before. "Ten years ago, the court psychiatric hospital caught fire, and the only girl who escaped was caught on camera doing a 32-turn whipping in Act Three of Swan Lake -- exactly like the surveillance footage from the morning of the chemical plant explosion."

Evelyn's nails dug into his back from an old gunshot wound. This action caused Lucas's spine to tighten, as when he was locked in a sniper's mirror in Afghanistan: "When you changed my DNA sample at the morgue, didn't you notice that the woman was missing her right sixth rib?" Her breath smelled of bitter almonds as she sneered. "But your dear sister's remains bear the scalding marks of the Rothschild coat of arms."

The confrontation was interrupted by the sudden sound of a vibrating cell phone. Lucas glimpsed on the screen a nude photo sent by Daniel - Evelyn's hickey on her neck was hiding where the bug had been implanted. The blurred corner of the painting in the background reveals a half-bloody fingerprint, a perfect match to the one left at the Capitol fire three years ago.

"It's time to upgrade the game." Evelyn took the opportunity to slip the magnetic card into his belt buckle, which was a copy of the chemical plant bombing scene from the FBI evidence room. "Look at the 17th minute of your father's funeral video, and the pall holder was wearing a watch on his right hand."

That's when the door to the safe house was blown open by a shotgun. Daniel held up a shotgun whose barrel was still smoking, and his custom suit smelled of gas station 92: "Honey, when you stole the key from Crime and Punishment in my study, you didn't notice that a hair was missing between the pages?"

Evelyn rolled behind the counter in the hail of bullets. The nitroglycerin she painted in the cracks of the tile last week is flowing through the bullet holes, and Daniel is accelerating the chemical reaction with every shot he fires. As Lucas aims his pocket pistol between Daniel's eyes, she knocks over the acetone solution in the microwave oven - the flammable gas engulfs the kitchen.

"Catch me!" She reached out at both men through the flames. Lucas's tactical gloves and Daniel's mechanical prosthetics clasp her right and left wrists, and the tearing reminds her of the tutu she caught in a blast door when she was nine years old.

As the trio fell to the basement, Evelyn's pre-arranged cushion inflated itself. She lay between the bodies of her two enemies, listening to the cracking of their ribs, much like the cogs of a watch that had broken when her mother had fallen. Ventilation ducts suddenly spewed lilac gas - the same formula as the nerve agent released before the chemical plant explosion.

"Welcome to the truth party." She put on a gas mask and watched the two men spasm in the toxic fog. "Breathe faster now. The nanobots in your blood will take you through every frame of the afternoon of June 12, 1997."

Lucas' pupils were the first to dilate. A retinal projection shows his father holding a video camera to film the chemical plant explosion, while Daniel's robotic prosthetic hand paints a burning iris on the ground - Evelyn's hidden signature at the corner of each painting.

By the time sirens broke through the toxic fog, Evelyn had changed into a janitor's uniform and was evacuated from the sewer. The Zippo lighter chip she left at the scene began playing a recording of an internal FBI communication that had been doctored this morning: "Identified Agent Lucas Carter as the mastermind of the Capitol arson..."

As the subway roared through the tunnel, she tore off the bionic skin from the scar on her right shoulder. A pico projector casts a surveillance image on the walls of the car: the mental hospital himself is being injected with a blue potion, while Lucas, a teenager holding a camera outside the glass window, has the Rothschild Biotech logo embroidered on the chest of his white coat.

(End of this chapter)