SECTOR THREE, 11:00 P.M.
TUESDAY, MARCH 2, 2021

Like a relentless boxer, rain beat down on the city, first jabbing with sharp needles, then smacking Seattle with huge fat drops that hit like haymakers, the barrage punctuated by the ominous rumble of thunder and the eerie flash of lightning.

An unmarked black car drew to a stop in a rat-infested Sector Three alley, the rain rattling the metal roof like machine-gun fire. Two men in dark suits climbed out, to be instantly drenched, though neither seemed to notice. Each wore a radio earplug with a short microphone bent toward his mouth.

Sage Thompson -- the man who'd emerged from the passenger's side -- was relieved that the headsets, at least, seemed to be waterproof. In their coat pockets, each man carried one of the new portable thermal imagers that, just this week, had become standard equipment. Thompson -- barely six feet, almost skinny at 180 pounds -- wondered if water-tightness was among the gizmo's various high-tech bells and whistles.

Water sluiced down the alley in a torrent that seemed to express the sky's anger, eventually bubbling over the edge of a rusty grate maybe ten yards in front of them. Thompson was forced to jump the stream and his feet nearly slid out from under him as he landed and bumped into a triangle of garbage cans, sending them crashing into each other, creating a din that rivaled the storm's, his hands flying wide to help maintain his balance. Then his hands dropped back to his sides, the one holding his flashlight clanging off the imager in his coat pocket, the other moving to make sure his pistol was still secure in its holster on his belt.

The hefty man who'd been driving -- Cal Hankins -- shone his flashlight in Thompson's face, huffed once, and eased around a dumpster that looked like it hadn't been emptied since before the Pulse. Moving slowly ahead, their flashlights sweeping back and forth over the brick hulk in front of them, the two men finally halted in front of what had once been a mullioned window.

The interior of the six-story brick building -- an abandoned warehouse, Thompson surmised -- seemed a black hole waiting to devour them without so much as a belch. Next to Thompson, his partner Hankins swept a flashlight through one of the broken panes, painting the rainy night with slow, even strokes. Darkness surrendered only brief glimpses of the huge first-floor room as it swallowed up the light.

"You sure this is the right place?" Hankins asked gruffly.

There was no fear in the man's voice -- Thompson sensed only that his partner didn't want his time wasted. At forty, bucket-headed Hankins -- the senior partner of the duo -- wore his blondish hair in a short brush cut that revealed only a wisp or two of gray. His head rested squarely on his shoulders, without apparent benefit of a neck, and he stood nearly six-three, weighing in (Thompson estimated) at over 230. But the man wasn't merely fat -- there was enough gristle and muscle and bone in there to make Hankins formidable.

Still, Thompson knew their boss -- that nasty company man, Ames White, a conscienceless yuppie prick if there ever was one -- had been all over Hankins about his weight and rode the older guy mercilessly about it. Though he knew better than to ever say it out loud, Thompson considered White the worst boss in his experience -- which was saying something.

White was smart, no doubting that, but he had a sarcastic tongue and a whiplash temper that Thompson had witnessed enough times to know he should keep his mouth shut and his head low.

"This is the right place, all right," Thompson said, raising his voice over the battering rain. "Dispatch said the thermal imager team picked up a transgenic in the market in Sector Four."

"This is Sector Three."

"Yeah -- they followed him here before they lost him."

Hankins shook his head in disgust. "Then why the fuck ain't they lookin' for him, then? What makes us the clean-up crew for their sorry asses?"

These questions were rhetorical, Thompson knew, though they did have answers, the same answer in fact: Ames White.

And Hankins spent much of his time bitching about White, behind the boss's back, of course. But they both knew it was only a matter of time before White found a way to get rid of Hankins...

... and then Thompson would have to break in a new partner, possibly one even younger than himself. Then he would be the old-timer. The thought made him cringe.

Not exactly a kid at twenty-seven, Thompson was the antithesis of Hankins: the younger man seemed like a long-neck bottle standing next to the pop-top beer can that was his partner. Married to his college sweetheart, Melanie, and with a new baby daughter, Thompson was the antithesis of Hankins in terms of home life, as well: the gristled bulldog had been divorced twice and had three or four kids he never saw and didn't really seem to give a damn about.

This was a partnership made not in Heaven but in Ames White's twisted idea of the right thing to do; and Thompson still hadn't figured out if being partnered with Hankins was a reward -- setting him up to step into the older man's shoes -- or a punishment -- White saddling him with a complainer.

Thompson -- in keeping a low profile and, frankly, kissing White's ass - - sometimes wondered if their sick, slick boss didn't see through his obsequiousness into the contempt he truly felt.

Hankins took a few steps to the right, Thompson on his heels. Withdrawing the imager from his pocket, Hankins squeezed the trigger and methodically scanned the area around them for the transgenic -- nothing.

The new thermal imagers looked like smaller versions of the pre-Pulse radar guns that Thompson had read about in his online history studies. The biggest difference was that instead of having red LED numbers that showed speed, the ass-end readout area of the imagers contained a tiny monitor that showed infrared pictures of any heat source the front end was pointed at. The two men were looking for something with a core temperature of 101.6, the average temperature of transgenics -- three degrees higher than humans.

"Fuck it," Hankins sighed, rain streaking down his face like heat-wave perspiration. "Looks like we're going to have to go inside."

"Looks like," Thompson said with a nod.

"We'll split up," Hankins announced.

"Makes us both more vulnerable."

Hankins kissed the air obnoxiously. "You're so sensitive, so vulnerable, even with papa bear around."

"Cut it out, man."

Hankins grunted another, deeper sigh. "Sooner we get done with this thankless-ass job, sooner we can get away from this fuckin' monsoon."

"You're right," Thompson admitted, his voice calm even though his guts now seemed to be swimming upstream toward his mouth.

It wasn't that Thompson was a coward. He'd seen action before, plenty of it -- even for the post-Pulse world, Seattle was a tough town, and for cops and anybody working security, it was a higher risk job than steeplejack -- and he handled the fear and stress just fine. What bothered him was, he didn't think either he or even the rugged Hankins could handle a pissed-off transgenic alone. They weren't human, those transgenics -- they were monsters, really.

And Sage Thompson had seen monster movies before -- he knew what happened when people split up in such circumstances.

He could tell himself that this was reality, not fantasy; but Seattle in the last few years had turned into a place more ghastly than the imagination of any mere writer or filmmaker could conjure.

Hankins said, "When we find the stairs, I'll head up and start down. You begin down here and work your way up. We'll meet in the middle, agree we didn't find anything, and haul our soggy asses out of here."

"It's a plan," Thompson said with a shrug.

Copyright © 2003 by Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation