Apex

by Robert J. Crane

  “I bet,” Eilish said, right on cue. “The wind in your hair, on your cheeks—all that. I bet it was grand.”

  “Yeah, that was great, too,” I said. “But I mostly miss not having to be stuck in a car with a bunch of yahoos who are either wittingly or unwittingly trying to get me killed.”

  That shut them all up, which was kind of the point. I was on a simmer, heading toward a hard boil. I didn’t need this shit; my team was being attacked on the West Coast, my known associates had been attacked in New York City and—technically—Virginia, though I didn’t much want to be associated with Eric Simmons or his egghead-yet-idiotic girlfriend.

  All I wanted was to sit on the damned beach in Florida and drink my effing drink. Was that too much to—?

  Harry swerved hard, taking us off on a sudden exit next to a rest area sign he’d almost passed. Cassidy gasped, catching her laptop before it slid off her lap, and Eilish made a kind of merping noise you might normally associate with a too-cute CGI creature in a modern sci-fi movie.

  For my part, I just hung on and looked daggers at Harry. “What the hell was that?”

  “I apologize, ladies,” Harry said, guiding us into the rest area and pulling up in an isolated parking space toward the front of the lot. There was an old bathroom building to our rear and a sprawling scape of green space in front of us complete with picnic areas. The sun was starting to rise, and a few big semi trucks were pulling in, probably to bed down for the day. The parking lot was speckled with cars, people taking a few minutes to use the bathrooms and stretch their legs.

  And here we sat, pulling in as Harry threw the car into park and then looked at me. “A word, please.” Then he got out and slammed his door behind him.

  “I don’t think it’s just going to be one word,” Eilish said. “I’ve got to go to the loo again, though, how about you?”

  “Yep,” Cassidy said, opening her own door. “Enjoy your ass chewing, Sienna.” And they were gone.

  I was just sitting in the passenger seat, steaming. Harry Graves was going to chew my ass? After trying to feed me to the Terminator without a word of warning?

  Cassidy had seriously misapprehended whose ass was going to get ripped a new one. I got out of the car and slammed my own door, causing the SUV to wobble. I took my sweet time and went around to the rear of the hatchback, opening it and fetching a Snickers bar. I opened it and took a bite, thinking to hell with Eilish and her failure to appreciate great chocolate.

  I took my time, glancing between the seats and up ahead at Harry, who waited patiently on the grass in front of the SUV, like he had all day. He knew by probability when I was likely to be done making him wait, so he probably also knew his failure to react was driving me slightly nuts.

  Or maybe he just knew my patience was bound to run out soon, because it did. So I slammed the hatchback and headed off down the slope at the edge of the parking lot and down the rolling green park space to where he waited.

  “What the hell do you want?” I asked, figuring niceties were unnecessary. He’d seen that coming a mile away, I was sure, since my skin was crawling and I was so irritable I would have gladly battered his head around just to relieve some of my building stress.

  “Peace on earth and good will toward men and women,” Harry said with a lazy sigh, slight smile on his face. “But since I am unlikely to receive that gift anytime soon short of some sort of apocalypse that leaves everyone dead, I’ll settle for extracting that chip from your shoulder.”

  “It’s a mighty big chip, Harry,” I said, pausing to trash my candy wrapper in a conveniently placed garbage can by one of the picnic tables. “I’m not sure you have the strength to lift it.”

  “Oh, it’s huge,” Harry said. “Why, I’d say it’s the approximate weight of the world—or it used to be. Now it’s just a big piece of rock with the words ‘Sienna Nealon’s Emotional Baggage’ written all over it. Same weight, less responsibility.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “Can you read your own survival percentages? Because I calculate they’re dropping with every word you speak.”

  “Nope,” he said cheerfully. “That’s the thing about being a Cassandra; I can’t read my own future.”

  “I’m no seer, but I’m starting to guess there’s going to be a lot of pain and tooth loss in it very soon.”

  “But I can see yours clear as the nose on your face,” he said, turning his back to me. Probably figured I wouldn’t hit him like that. He was probably right. Probably. “I know what’s going to happen to you now, what’s going to happen next—don’t get me wrong, it branches, but there are some definite, external events in your future that … well, they push you back on a defined track in spite of all the uncertainty that comes between.”

  He looked over his shoulder at me. “And this, Sienna … is one of those events.”

  I scoffed at him. “Your fortune telling sucks, Harry. If you knew so much about my damned future at a distance, why didn’t I see your ass in Scotland? Seems to me that whole thing must have caught you by surpr—”

  I stopped when I saw the look on his face, because it was unlike anything I’d quite seen from the freewheeling Harry Graves … ever before.

  It was guilt.

  “You knew,” I said, little chills running down the back of my neck. “You read me before, either in Chicago or when we were fighting Harmon. You … you knew what was going to happen to me in Scotland.” I took a step closer to him, and he stayed still, looking out at the sky, refusing to look at me.

  I saw it anyway. Guilt was a unique expression to Harry Graves; I guessed he didn’t wear it often.

  “Reed said he tried to get ahold of you, through Veronika,” I said, blinking at him. “You knew what I was walking into in Scotland, you knew about—”

  “Rose,” Harry said, a little hoarsely, and it sounded like agreement. “Yes. I knew about Rose. Sort of.”

  “And you let me walk into—into that—anyway?” My voice went low, raspy, too, and I was suddenly anchored to the spot. I wanted to leap forward, to grab him by the throat—sincerely, this time—and shake him until he answered.

  “Yes,” he said softly.

  I took a staggering, unplanned step back instead. “… Why?” I felt weak, dazed, like Rose had just clobbered me over the head. Which was ridiculous; I’d shredded her brains with a bullet and we’d burned her body to ash. Her days of hitting me, touching me—of ripping me apart—were done.

  “I don’t know if I could properly explain to you the shape of the future,” Harry said, blinking, “but I’ll try. I saw Rose coming, yes, much like I saw Mr. Shadowpuncher—”

  “I really prefer, ‘Mr. Waffle-Interruptus’ or ‘the Terminator,’ if you must.”

  “I don’t think the ‘Waffle-Interruptus’ one is going to catch on,” Harry said, “but yes … I saw Rose coming like I saw him coming.” He took a couple steps away from me, and I couldn’t decide if he was sad-pacing or just stepping out of my punching range. “And messing with someone’s future beyond a few seconds … it gets complicated. You remember in Chicago, I told you—”

  “The world of metahumans was going to end,” I said.

  He nodded. “That anytime I saw someone like us … it was like a doomsday clock hanging over their head. Don’t get me wrong, I see those every day, because people die every day. But in this case..” He shrugged. “Let’s just say, I saw that … for everyone … coming from Scotland. In the not too distant future. The probability was rising before you went over there. Now …” He shrugged. “It’s gone. That doom is over.”

  I turned my head so as not to look at him. “My … souls … told me before they … died,” That was a hard word to say, “… that Rose wouldn’t stop with me.” I clenched my eyes shut. “I guess they were right.”

  “They were right,” Harry said. “Let’s say I tipped you off earlier? Warned you about trouble in Edinburgh?” He shook his head. “Every single instance I looked at … you would have died if you interrupted he
r game before she was ready to play with you. She would have killed you and just been done with it.”

  “Proving once again that supervillains shouldn’t play with their food,” I said quietly. “The Scott Evil approach is best.”

  “I don’t really know what that means, and I’m totally fine with you not explaining—oh, movie reference, got it,” he said. “Never heard of Austin Powers before, hm.” He shook his head. “This is the danger with warning about the future, with messing with time.” He walked a little closer to me, and his eyes were sincere and intense and bright. Striking.

  Kinda maybe a little … pretty.

  “… every action has consequences,” Harry said, grave as his surname might suggest but which in practice he seldom was. “I can read the probabilities, but I can’t tell you the definites because the moment I do—they stop being definite because time and choice are slippery things. If I’d sent you off to Scotland with Rose’s name and the danger she posed the moment I saw her in your future—saw what she was going to do to you—your survival odds went to zero. Believe that. Just the same as if I took us any other road but this one, on this trip, trying to avoid this so-called ‘Terminator’ you just ran across.”

  I pushed my hands against my forehead. “Dammit, Harry,” I said, putting pressure on my scalp. “I hate this. I hate—”

  “You hate the fact that my mere existence makes you feel even less in control of your life than usual, lately,” Harry said, and here his smile turned … comforting. “I don’t blame you for that.”

  “Good, because I get to throw the blame right now. It’s my damned turn after getting my ass kicked.”

  “I’m just asking you to trust me,” he said.

  “I thought you were coming because you needed my help?” I stared him down.

  “I do need your help,” he said. “I have a unique problem and you are the only one that’s going to be able to solve it.”

  I just stared at him, feeling a little ragged. “And that is … ?”

  “Not yet,” he said, wagging a finger at me. “Besides, you have a little more steam to let out at me.”

  I paused; I’d been about to tear into him again for not being a little more forthcoming on at least what kind of help he expected from me, but that took me aback. “Dammit, Harry,” I said, because he’d totally caught me off guard and pre-empted my assault.

  He grinned. “I know. But I don’t like being yelled by you any more than—well, anyone. I don’t thrive on it, see, so I avoid it when possible. Your ire, I mean.”

  “You’re doing a pretty shitty job of it so far.”

  “I’ll work on improving my game as time goes by,” Harry said, looking out over the green, sloping hills where the park led down to endless trees. “But … about what you were going to say to me …” He glanced sideways at me. “You know you’re not yourself lately.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Duh.”

  “You know you’re not going to beat the bad guys like this. In your current frame of mind.”

  “Oh, are you my fight coach now?” I asked, now irritable once more.

  “You could do worse.” He grinned again.

  I threw a punch, he dodged it. Another, he dodged it. Three more, a kick, then a spin kick—wobbly, because my balance was pretty crap after months of no practice.

  He turned back every attack, naturally.

  “You know, I’ve killed a Cassandra with my bare hands before,” I said, staring him down.

  “You’ve killed a lot of people with your bare hands.” He sounded distinctly amused. “I’m not going to be one of them.”

  “I thought you couldn’t read your own future?”

  I came at him again, twice as furious. I was a little faster than he was, but I played careful. The last time I’d fought a Cassandra had been on a rooftop, and he—Phillip Delsim—hadn’t been particularly skilled at hand-to-hand. Harry wasn’t that skilled, either, but he was more practiced, though a hair slower than I would have expected. He turned every attack aside but missed every opportunity to counter me and strike a blow of his own.

  Then he spun me around and slapped me—extremely gently—on the belly, which told me he was choosing to pass up on those opportunities, not just watching them sail by unnoticed.

  I redoubled my efforts and soon I was wheezing, breathing heavily from the fury of the attacks I was throwing.

  He caught my last kick. “That’s enough. Someone’s about to look.” And he let my leg go.

  I doubled over, trying to catch my breath. “Gee, thanks … sensei …”

  “You’ve had a little time to wallow,” he said, standing upright next to me. “But that’s not you. What would Sienna Nealon do?”

  “Sienna Nealon is … going to kick your ass here in a second,” I wheezed, “as soon as … whoever is looking is … done doing so.”

  “Keep going like this for another thirty seconds and you’ll be heaving up that candy bar,” Harry said. “It’s enough for now. We’ll work on your cardio more later. Cassidy and Eilish are waiting at the car.”

  “Let them wait,” I said, pushing myself back up. “You asked what Sienna Nealon would do?” I looked out over the trees, taking a few steps away from Harry to turn my back on him. I just stopped talking there.

  “Yeah?” he asked.

  “Sorry, figured you read my answer ahead,” I said.

  “I did,” Harry said, easing in behind me. “But this conversation is not just about me.”

  “It’s not?” I played coy. I liked playing coy. Unless it involved dressing up as a giant goldfish. (Yes, I know it’s spelled koi, don’t be a douchebag about my lame puns.)

  “It’s about the fact you sent your friend Dr. Zollers away without so much as a hearing,” Harry said. “It’s about that bottle you keep hiding in.”

  “You want me to talk it out?” I was still breathing heavily, my skin chilled with the perspiration beneath my clothes. “Are you my therapist now, too?”

  “Well, you sent your real one away,” he said. “So … yeah. Lucky me, getting to crack open that delicate Sienna shell.”

  I just stood there, staring at the trees. “The Sienna shell got pretty well cracked already, Harry.”

  A pause. “I know.”

  “‘What would Sienna Nealon do?’” I asked quietly into the morning. I waited for a response.

  None came.

  “No, really, Harry … what would I do?” I asked, turning to look at him as he came up to my shoulder. I was being earnest. “I honestly don’t—there’s so much I don’t remember anymore. Reed and I will be having a conversation and he’ll tell me about this time, doing something—there was a mission in Colorado we went on together, and he mentioned something about it and laughed—I just … I couldn’t remember anything about it.” Little cold prickles fell down my arms, down my shoulders. “Harry … there are holes in my head, in my mind.” I looked back at the woods. “So when I ask you … ‘What would Sienna Nealon do?’ it’s not me being funny, or playing—”

  “I know,” he said softly.

  “I really don’t know anymore,” I said, my shoulders shaking. “I don’t know what she took—don’t even know what I’m missing—just that—there’s so much gone, Harry …” It wasn’t the chill that had me shaking, but he steadied me with an arm. “I wake up in the night and—and I don’t—” I let out a gentle sob, and then one that was not nearly so gentle.

  “… And I don’t know who I am …” I said, as he put an arm around me, taking me into his embrace. “I swear to God, Harry … there are days … nights when I wake up … when I don’t even know who I am anymore …”

  “I know,” he said, taking hold of me and letting me shake, letting me pour the tears out on his shoulder, hot, wet, sliding down my face. “I know. But I promise you,” he said, after a few minutes like that, just holding me while I cried, “that I’m with you … and I will show you—again—exactly who Sienna Nealon is … by the time this is all done.” I could hear
the smile in his voice, and it gave me just the slightest breath of hope. “And the world … they’re going to remember, too.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “Ihave to talk to my brother,” I said, once we were a few miles down the road. “But he’s not going to be sleeping right now.”

  The sun was rising, the horizon brightening as it rose to our right. We were heading north, almost to Nashville, Harry at the wheel. I assumed he knew what he was doing.

  “Sounds like a phone call is in order,” Eilish said.

  “The problem with the phone is—” I started.

  “The NSA will be listening to his calls,” Cassidy interjected, “hoping to catch a whiff of you. That’s why he assembled the team to come to Scotland almost entirely in person.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “So I need a way to talk to him that isn’t going to trip their alarms.”

  “Who cares if it trips their alarm, so long as it doesn’t lead back to you and definitely incriminate him?” Eilish said after a minute. “After all, it’s not what they know, it’s what they can prove.”

  “Spoken like a true criminal,” Cassidy said, but she wasn’t sneering, she was more … calculating. “If you just want to talk to him and you don’t care if they hear, you could call with a voice scrambler on. It’s what I use when I need to hide my identity. I even have a program on my computer that can handle it. Couple that with a little call origin bouncing—I could set up a phone call with him that could last at least a few minutes without the NSA tracing it back to us here.”

  “Interesting,” I said, though I was really feeling a sense of stark terror. I looked to my left and sure enough, Harry was white-knuckling the steering wheel. He caught me looking and nodded once, which I took to be an affirmation of the fear I was thinking but barely daring to say.