Changeling Read Online Free PDF Page A

justice.”
    “Just checking, boss.”
    The near fight ended as quickly as it began, but something had sparked between the pair. Tempest and Flex openly disagreed with Trance’s position on the imprisoned Banes. Trance wanted to see them pardoned, released, and allowed to live regular lives. Many of the Banes had expressed similar wishes over the last few months. They no longer had a leader to fight for; many had established some semblance of a life on Manhattan Island and desired to stay—with freedoms intact and supplies made readily available.
    In Trance’s eyes, we were all MetaHumans. She reserved the term Bane for those still operating outside of the law, rather than a blanket label for the sixty-odd adults who once opposed our predecessors. A fresh start, she called it.
    Tempest and Flex stood in the opposite corner of the boxing ring. Both had been terribly hurt—the former physically, the latter emotionally—six months ago. No one expected the hurt to go away quickly, but they clung to it like a safety blanket. The Banes had not changed, and they never would. In their eyes, evil never died. It only hibernated awhile before rearing its terrible head.
    I didn’t take sides in the argument. I never felt I had the right. I could never hope to walk in their shoes. Everything I’d done, every move I’d made over the last six months had been about making my own path.
    Rangers and Banes were things of the past. All we had now was the present.
    “So what’s our next step?” I asked. “Weatherfield?”
    Trance stood up. “Definitely Weatherfield. They’re connectedto this case, even if the killer isn’t from their facility. One of the victims definitely is, and for all we know, there are more than two.”
    A sense of triumph settled warmly in my chest. After all these years, a chance to finally set foot inside of the Weatherfield facility; enter the walls that had destroyed Stan’s mind and spirit and left an empty husk in its place.
    “We should bring Cipher along,” Tempest said, and Trance agreed. She had her com out and dialing as we headed back to our car.

Three
    Weatherfield
    T o save time, we picked up Gage “Cipher” McAllister a few blocks from the house; we still had a good twenty minutes of traffic maneuvering between us and Weatherfield. He climbed into the backseat with me, in his blue-topped uniform, and Trance sped off toward the freeway.
    Cipher’s hyper-enhanced senses would make any interrogation expert turn green. He could hear heartbeats a hundred yards away, had a vision range of a quarter mile, and possessed the sensitive nose of a bloodhound. He’d also taught himself to combine his senses and create a unique organic lie detector. Changes in blood pressure, heart rate, sweating, and body temperature were all easy clues in the game of deceit.
    Though the heart of the film industry had moved north years ago, music remained a cash cow in Los Angeles, along with other entrepreneurial enterprises. Traffic on the freeways remained heavy as citizens traveled north to south, from Van Nuys and Burbank down to Pasadena, and farther south to Long Beach. Most of the exits to and from West Hollywood,Chinatown, Inglewood, and Santa Monica saw little use, and sat cracked and empty. The center of old L.A. was for the poor, the hiding, and people like us—outsiders, all.
    The Weatherfield compound took up an entire city block. Double rows of chain-link fence ran the perimeter, topped with razor wire and security cameras. A four-story parking structure occupied the north corner. Two large buildings took over the rest. The second and fourth floors were connected by glassed-in walkways. It looked like a hospital or office building, with no outward signs of its sinister interior. A single gate emerged out of nowhere, and Trance had to hit the brakes to avoid shooting past.
    She paused at the guard hut and rolled down her window. The guard, sweaty and red-faced in his black uniform and hat, took one