Getting off the elevator on the twenty-first floor, the sign read: "Restricted Area. Security clearance 5 and above. Only!" Maxwell wondered if the etched plastic placard had ever deterred anyone from proceeding past that point. Although, it probably never needed to. Probably didn't need to be there at all. One way or another, no one got to this floor unless they belonged here. Maxwell hadn't even known there was anything up here besides offices until this morning.

Catherine Fontaine led the way, her nose cut the air like a shark fin slicing through a chummed sea. The older woman was rail thin. Her shoulder blades showed through her silk blouse like a primordial exoskeleton.

"I would have expected more security," Maxwell said as they crossed a carpeted but empty reception space.

"You mean guards?"

Everything that came out of her mouth was a snap. It was like being a recruit interacting with a drill sergeant again. Maxwell found he didn't mind it so much. The gruff demeanor of Phil Donnelly and his assistant was a pleasant change after the flabby bureaucrats he had reported to previously at the DTAA. Maxwell still hadn't met Donnelly face to face. The director of the Agency had only called to tell Maxwell he was being given the position of Interim Sector Chief in the wake of Kendall's death.

Donnelly had been impressed with the way Maxwell had organized the assault troops. He had reigned in the chaos and restored order. With the mission blown, he redeployed the teams to clean up the area, retrieve the bodies of their comrades and the equipment and make the marina look relatively normal before reporters could descend it. Then he informed the press of the successful DEA raid on drug smugglers that had occurred there that evening.

The politicians, local and federal, spent the next day ranting about the harm drugs were doing to society and the dangers of Mexico. And no one examined what really had happened too closely.

"This is a passive detention block," Fontaine said explaining about the security. "Technology hasn't let us down yet. Surveillance enables us to neutralize threats before human intervention is required. If it makes you feel better, there is an armed security unit station on the twentieth."

Maxwell felt as though he had just been called an ignorant Luddite and he bristled to defend himself. But that wasn't the right play. Defensiveness would come off as weakness with these people.

"Impressive," was all he said.

They marched down a corridor that looked very much like one in an economy hotel or a cheap condominium building, with doors distributed at regular intervals along white walls. The only thing that broke the illusion of normalcy were the security locks and the flat screen monitors beside each door. The screens showed the contents of each room through a fisheye lens.

"You're first prisoner has been quartered in a suite as you requested. Here." She stopped at a door. The video image showed a man inside resting in a chair. His eyes were pressed closed and his head was tilted all the way back as though seeking some kind of inner peace. He was backlit by the morning light obscuring finer details.

"Are you sure about this?" she asked. "The initial psych evaluations weren't reassuring. We have a facility near Punxsutawney. We use it primarily for people who have witnessed things they shouldn't have and who can't be persuaded to believe they weren't real. A few of the doctors are competent , though. They might be able to do something for him."

"Thank you. But I believe I can bring him back and make him useful."

Fontaine shrugged as though saying, it's your funeral.

Maxwell pressed his new ID to the security panel and the lock clicked open. The room inside could have been at any four star hotel in America. The furnishings were posh but impersonal. The radio was playing a little jazz. Horus Benning stood up in alarm when Maxwell stepped in.

"It's okay, old friend. Remember me?" Instinctively his hands came out as though to calm an attacking dog. The jovial, plump man who used to work for Maxwell was gone. In his place, there was this gaunt, feral, walking corpse of a thing.

Horus nodded. "Where am I? What is this place?"

"You're in a safe house in Philadelphia." Maxwell gestured to the tinted windows and the city beyond. It was a rather ingenious idea for a prison: put it so high that even if a prisoner was able to break the reinforced windows, the only way out was a two-hundred foot drop, down a slick glass descent. And the rooms could be dressed up so the detainee never even knew they were in a cell. "There are people trying to kill you, as you know. It's best you stay here until we can get a handle on it."

"The Kyles?" Horus said, the bitterness in his voice his own answer.

The poor bastard had somehow come to believe that the cult of dead-rocker wannabes were reincarnations of his old employer. When the DTAA forces swept the area they found him trying to get away in a stolen SUV. What the hell Horus Benning was doing in Galveston after dropping off the Earth for four years was something Maxwell was still trying to ascertain.

"I have to kill them. They're evil. I have been charged by God."

Maxwell winced without moving. Why was it always God with the nut-jobs? They never did things because they wanted to. It was always God told them to. The abdicating personal responsibility made them dangerous as hell.

Although, it also made them incredibly malleable.

"Of course, Horus. I couldn't agree with you more." As far as the government was able to determine, the cult was pretty well extinct. But Benning didn't need to know that. His rage and blind faith could be put to good use. Maxwell just needed to figure out what direction to point him in.

At the moment, he didn't even have a target or a goal. There would be time for that. If he could tread water and keep his head above water for the next few days.

Maxwell was still reeling over the turn of fate that had befell him in the past forty-eight hours. The little shit Kendall had been doctoring up all the reports leaving Maxwell out to and putting himself in position to take credit for everything if things went well. The fink probably figured if it went to hell he could change those briefs to pin the blame on Maxwell. He hadn't counted on getting himself dead. Now Maxwell looked squeaky clean, while Kendall looked like a buffoon who fucked up everything, including showing up on a sweep-up op.

As Donnelly had said, "An escaped test subject, dead agents, conducting off the book black ops missions in civilian areas. Good God! I know he was your friend, so sorry if I'm blunt." Maxwell had murmured demurely—the poor guy—while thinking, yes, please be blunt! Tell me what you really think of that ass. "But he must have been one stupid son-of-bitch to oversee the mission personally. A man of his position... And once he put himself in the line of fire, he should at least have had the good sense to keep breathing."

Whatever the director of the DTAA and the POTUS had wanted when they ordered the termination of Project LARS was irrelevant. Now all they wanted was Amy Westgate gone. By any means possible. So long as there were no news reports about werewolf attacks on US soil, they didn't care what Maxwell did. It was all about keeping it quiet. This had allowed him to pull the Amber Alert and give Emily a bit of peace on her way to Ft. Lauderdale.

But the Kyle Silver cult was a concern. They had somehow known about Amy and seemed to be just as well informed as the Agency. They had found the body of one of the cult members near the scene. He had an alarming amount of information about the girl on his phone. Their ranks might be decimated but Maxwell wasn't about to take any chances. He needed to get to the bottom of it and Horus would be part of his two pronged attack.

"Are you comfortable" Maxwell asked him.

Horus was hesitant like he didn't understand the question, but eventually he answered in the affirmative.

Again the answer was slow in coming. But with each word, enthusiasm took hold in the man. "Breakfast. Eggs, bacon, and pancakes."

"Sure. No problem. I'll get room service to bring up the works. You just take it easy and I'll be by later and we can catch up."

Maxwell exited and found Fontaine where he had left her, typing something into her phone. "Satisfied with the accommodations?"

"They're perfect. Now let's go check on my other guest."

"We placed him in an interior room. No need for pretences. Were you planning on interrogating him yourself? I know that's something of your specialty. They walked further down the hall to a door on the opposite side of the corridor. On the monitor, he observed the prisoner pacing about his tiny, windowless, eight-by-eight cell. His long hair had been buzzcut down to the scalp. His clothes replaced with white pajama-like shirt and pants. The whole effect made him look far more like a mental patient than Horus Benning.

He would be the second means of cracking the cult.

Horus had been keeping the so far unnamed prisoner tied up in the back of his truck. They needed to rehydrate him but otherwise the doctors had given him the clean bill of health. They'd be able to start working on him any day now.

"No, of course not," Maxwell said, knowing the proper answer to the question. The memory of Kendall's oversteps were still fresh in everyone's mind. As much as he might like taking a crack at this thug, politically it was better to let others get their hands dirty. "Those days were long ago. I'll let the pros handle it."

"So we're done here?"

When Maxwell nodded, she said: "Good. I'll take you to the labs to check on the patient now."

They strode back to the elevator. Maxwell almost didn't want to go. He didn't want to admit it but their next stop held a solid degree of dread for him. The official name of their destination was Prendergast Laboratory C but the room on the twenty-third floor might as well have been called the Dungeon of Dr. Frankenstein. From what they had told Maxwell, it was as much a house of horrors as it was a scientific facility.

"I still find it hard to believe," he said trying to sound casual. Ordinarily he'd keep his mouth shut to ensure he didn't give anything away, but Fontaine's silence was unnerving. "It hardly seems possible. I mean, you're practically talking about bring someone back from the dead. It's all a bit science-fictiony."

Fontaine sighed like the drill sergeant had gone off duty and was sitting down at the bar badly in need of a beer or something stronger. "Welcome to the DTAA, Agent Wiley." She sounded just as unsettled by what was waiting for them up in Laboratory C as he was.

***

Author's Note: Sorry for a bit of a meh installment this week.  This one didn't turn out the way I wanted it to. But I had to get across that Max returned home from Galveston with a new position and three interesting people. Any guesses on who's the patient?