Apex

by Robert J. Crane

  “Didn’t she just lose the love of her life a day or so ago?” Eilish asked, watching her with brow furrowed.

  “Yep,” I said. “Didn’t she just enter that bathroom stall looking like death itself was about to claim her?”

  Eilish threw me a look, one which turned frozen quickly, and I caught the significance: You’re one to talk about looking like death, that was what she was thinking. But she said: “Uh, yeah.”

  I analyzed all the available data and came to a quick conclusion. “Shit,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Eilish said again. “What do you reckon?”

  “Amphetamines,” I whispered, meta-low, in case there was a random narc hanging out in one of the occupied stalls. “I reckon amphetamines in some form.”

  “Should we say something to her?” Eilish asked, pushing the water on and rinsing her hands. She, too, was speaking meta-low.

  I laughed, and it came out short and super bitter. “I don’t think I can deal with the irony of me hosting an intervention for anyone else right now,” I said. “Besides, her … whatever … is none of my business.”

  “Hey, amphetamines are serious business,” Eilish said. “I had a friend who died from them.”

  “They’re truly terrible,” I agreed, “for humans. Which Cassidy is not. And it’s not like she smoked them, so—I dunno. This doesn’t sound like my problem.”

  “A fine friend you are,” Eilish said, looking at me in the mirror, the disappointment thick.

  “In case it escaped your notice,” I said, looking right back, “Cassidy is not my friend. Cassidy is someone I had to pay ten million dollars to in order to help me out of a life-threatening jam when all my friends showed up for free. Now I owe her a favor, and she’s dragging me out of my—I dunno, hibernation—to collect. If you think this favor I owe her includes worrying excessively about her consumption of illegal drugs that may not even adversely affect her function? You’d be wrong. That is way outside my purview.” I shifted my gaze back to my skeletal self in the mirror. “Besides … I think I’ve got other things to worry about right now.”

  “Yeah, worry about yourself, I guess,” Eilish snapped. “I’m starting to see you’re quite good at that.” And she stormed out before I could offer anything but a sputtering reply, leaving me alone with my reflection, the girl in the mirror a stark reminder that not only should I feel like I was alone in this, but that I wasn’t even truly myself right now …

  If I could actually remember who I really was.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  “You figure out who’s going to drive?” Harry asked me, catching me in front of the tourist counter. He’d just been leaning there, studiously ignoring the attentive stare of the lady waiting behind it, who looked hopeful that he might ask her some question about Kentucky that she could jump in and answer.

  “I guess it’s me,” I said, glancing at the woman behind the counter as Harry pulled out of his lean and favored her with a winning smile that she returned as I frowned. She looked to be about twice his age, but he gave her the full charm, even though he was clearly sleepy, and headed for the door as she watched, leaving me to catch up.

  “Good choice,” he said as we went through the door. “Because the Irish gal will eventually take us into the wrong lane, and Miss Brainy-jumpy … well …”

  “Yeah, she’s got a problem,” I said, and he gave me a sympathetic smile. “What the hell was that about?” I inclined my head back toward the rest area door as we stepped out into the brisk day. No snow on the ground, but the grass was all brown and the sky had clouded over.

  “With the lady behind the counter?” he gave me a smile now. “I got her to focus on me, because if she’d looked at you for two more seconds, she would have recognized you and dropped a dime on us.”

  “Oh.” I didn’t stop, just kept walking with Harry as he meandered slightly right, taking us across a stretch of brown, winter-dormant grass. “What about now?” I asked, wondering why we were wandering a strange circuit, currently heading away from the car.

  “Oh, I just wanted to stretch my legs for a minute,” he said. I kept following him as we crested a very small hill and started back toward the sidewalk that ran the length of the parking lot and would, eventually, lead us back to our SUV. “Though I can’t pretend it doesn’t have an added benefit.”

  “Which is?”

  “There’s a man in a car over there who’d fawn all over you—quietly—if he recognizes you. Big supporter, big fan.” He nodded at a run-down station wagon with Illinois plates. I could see the guy he was talking about, dressed up in a fleece pullover and with close-cropped blond hair. “He doesn’t believe the media line about you.”

  I stared at him, blissfully unaware that his hero—me, apparently—was watching him from less than twenty yards away. It was a weird feeling, knowing things about people that didn’t have the first clue that you knew of them. “He’s one of the few, I guess. Does that make him crazy?”

  “Or at least a particular kind of ‘woke,’ maybe, in the parlance of our times,” Harry said.

  “Figures you’d be a fan of The Big Lebowski,” I muttered.

  “The wh—oh, it’s a movie,” Harry said. “Never seen it.”

  “That’s a shame. You’d like it. The Dude abides.”

  Harry paused, stared off into the distance. “Hm. I will like it.”

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

  He kept walking slowly back toward the car. “You’re going to want to keep the speed at seventy or lower. Any higher and you’ll catch the wrong kind of attention.”

  “Hey, Harry?” I asked, and he paused. “Should I, uh … do anything about Cassidy?”

  He took a little breath, like even the guy who could see the future was uncertain. “Eventually,” he said. “You’ll know when to say something and when to do something.”

  “That’s … super not helpful advice.”

  “It’ll be helpful when you actually need the help, which you don’t yet,” Harry said, continuing his walk. “You ever hear the proverb about manna from heaven?”

  “My mom wasn’t big on religion,” I said, falling in step next to him. “That may have come from being raised by the original Valkyrie, who actually knew gods.”

  “Your view on religion is immaterial, it’s a good story,” Harry said, as we passed the car. I raised a hand to point, since Eilish and Cassidy were lingering outside, absorbing some of the not-so-lovely weather. Eilish shot me a questioning look as we went by; Cassidy was again buried in her laptop, on the hood of the SUV, humming something very quietly. I couldn’t tell for sure, but it sounded a lot like “The Girl From Ipanema.” But at a very high tempo.

  “Oh, yeah?” I asked, trying to focus on what Harry was telling me.

  “Yeah,” he said. “See, God provides food—manna—every day to the Israelites when they’re in the desert. It just appears, tons of it, enough to feed them for the day. The anxious among them would gather more, but it would rot by the morning. And the next day, boom, more manna on the ground.”

  He stopped, and I stopped with him. “Lovely story,” I said. “I’m sure you told it for a reason.”

  “My powers, the way I am … I’m like manna from heaven,” Harry said, with a grin that was nowhere in the ballpark of humble. “I’ll tell you what you need to know, when you need to know it. Let’s not overcomplicate this.”

  I sighed. “Harry … admittedly I don’t know the background of that story, being only passingly familiar with it, but here’s what I see—those people were dependent on their god for food. Which is fine, if it’s your loving god who has led you out of slavery or whatever and is steering you toward—was it the promised land? I really don’t know. Anyway, you, I do not worship—”

  “You could start any time, I won’t mind.” Damn, how he was grinning.

  “You, I do not trust. Not to feed me—because I still haven’t gotten my waffle—”

  “But you�
�re fed!”

  “I can only eat so many Snickers bars before even my meta metabolism carb crashes, Harry. Anyway, forgive me for not, y’know, bowing and trusting you to dole out the information I need. Those people were not in charge of their own destiny, they were kept, because that’s what you do to dependents. You keep them in food, in clothing, in whatever they need.” I stared him down. “You control the supply of information so they make the choices you want them to make. You don’t give them any agency that way, and me, Harry? I make my own choices, okay? Have since—”

  “Since the day you walked out the door of your own house, I know,” he said. “But you’ve had people controlling that flow of information the whole time.”

  “Not by my choice,” I said.

  “Yeah, by your choice,” he said. “By your choice to associate with them.” He leaned in a little. “If you hadn’t overheard where Reed was going next, do you believe for one minute he would have told you to go to Minneapolis?”

  I started to reflexively say “yes” and then I bit my tongue.

  Because the answer was not only “No,” it was “Hell no.” Reed would not have told me that trouble was heading to Minneapolis. He would have let me find that one out on the news whenever the clash happened.

  “Even your brother controls the flow of information to you,” Harry said. “This is what we do as humans, we try and take care of those closest to us.”

  “I’m not that close to you, Harry,” I said, and then I realized I was only about a foot away. “You know what I mean.”

  “Yeah, I got it,” he said. “And you’re right. But—like I said before, I need your help, and part of the service rendered here is that you get my annoying insights whether you want them or not. And sometimes that means you get your information spoon fed, just like you would get it from any of your other friends. I’m just more honest and more informed than they are.”

  I felt my forehead reach boiling. “Can’t you just treat me like an adult and tell me the whole truth? Just get it all out there—‘Here’s what you’ll be facing this episode, better gird yourself, Sienna girl’?”

  He chuckled. “The human mind is a funny thing. Maybe one person in a thousand could handle that kind of guidance. Probably less. You ever heard that old sod about ‘When the student is ready, the teacher will appear’?”

  “Tell me you’re not casting yourself in the role of teacher as well as therapist, fight instructor, and—I dunno, client? What else would we call what we’re doing here?”

  “So you’re gonna pass on that whole deity-worshipper relationship? Because I feel like that would encompass it all.” The grin, again. Toothy, amused, and kinda boyishly adorable.

  I stared at him and part of me wanted to kill him.

  The other part, though …

  What the hell else could I do, though? Tell the man who could see into the future to take a flying effing leap, that I’d muddle through this on my own? I could do that, of course, and maybe I’d be none the worse off for it.

  On the other hand, now I had Terminator after me, and this other guy—Fire Guy—after my friends and family. Unless I could prove to myself Harry was actively working against me, his particular power set would come in awfully handy were I to keep going down this crazy road.

  And me? I just kept going down the crazy roads.

  “It’s okay,” he said, amusement bleeding out, “you don’t have to convert today. The Church of Harry will be around and taking donations for—”

  “Oh, shut up before I make a martyr of you.” I folded my arms in front of me as he chuckled under his breath.

  “You can kill me—actually, you can’t, probably—but my legend will only grow stronger.”

  “Argh.” I put my face in my right palm. “I swear to—”

  “Me?”

  I gave him the dagger look. “I swear to you, Harry, I just want an easy break. For the shit to stop hitting the fan. For things to stop exploding around me, for trouble to stop rolling my way—”

  “You were seeking trouble for years, Sienna,” he said. “It was your addiction, and … maybe just like other addictions, it’s the sort of thing that doesn’t just fold up the tent and leave when you think you’re done with it. Consequences follow behavior, they don’t come first.” Now he sounded all serious. “You made a name for yourself as a hero and a villain, whether you meant to or not. Much as you might wish you could say ‘Uncle—’”

  “I’m not calling Friday.”

  “—it’s not just a matter of waving the white flag and calling it quits, unless you want to give up and go to jail.” He gave a light shrug.

  I sighed. “Tell me this, then, because … back when I was working a case, I knew I’d reach a conclusion of some sort, and then I’d be done, at least with that one. This running thing.” I looked the wide world around me, or at least the borders I could see within the leafless trees that girded that Kentucky rest stop. “Do I ever get out of this again, Harry? Am I ever gonna …” I let my voice trail off. My eyes went unfocused in the distance.

  Even after months on the beach in Florida I was just so …

  Tired.

  “I’m just so ground down, you know?” My voice was raspy again. I was feeling … everything. The weariness. The lack of drink. Like I’d been emptied out and nothing replaced it. “Running for a year, then this. I mean …” I tried to find a way to ask the question that was weighing on me like …

  Like the weight of the world.

  “You’ll find your way out again, Sienna,” Harry said softly. “I can promise you that. You will find your way out of this, and you will be happy. And sad. Normal again, I guess you could say.” He smiled. “You’ll find a new normal, but, yes … this, too, shall pass away. And someday … I can’t say when … you will be happy again.” He smiled, and this time, I could feel a thrill of hope at his words. “I promise.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Reed

  Istepped off the plane in Minneapolis to find Governor Bridget Shipley waiting for me, clutching her hands, blond hair cut in an overgrown bob that reached the top of her shoulders. Governor Shipley was a pretty stately lady, and I’d met her enough times in the past to recognize the nervous tension in her as I descended the steps from the Gulfstream, my team following behind me.

  “Mr. Treston,” she said, taking a few strides to greet me as I came lightly off the last step. We were standing on the tarmac at the private terminal at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. A 737 roared in the distance as it came in for a landing, passing over the Mall of America toward the north-south runway. The governor extended her hand, and I shook it, carefully, trying to not break it with my still-newfound strength.

  I’d lived as a meta my entire adult life, and I’d always been strong. But what President Harmon had done, giving me a power boost? It had boosted everything. Strength, speed, dexterity. I wasn’t exactly exploding Coke bottles with my grip by accident, but I didn’t want to lose control on the Governor of Minnesota’s hand, either. The consequences would be a lot more dire than a little Cherry Coke on my new suit.

  “Rolling out the red carpet for us, Governor?” I asked, pausing to look her in the eye. I wasn’t her biggest fan; when Sienna had run into trouble, Shipley had been one of the first to pull out the long knives for her, making her life harder at a time when she didn’t need it.

  In previous meetings with the governor, I had been in Sienna’s company. They’d been congenial, filled with praise and mutual admiration.

  That had evaporated as soon as my sister hit hard times. I wasn’t keeping a shit list or anything, but if I had been, Governor Bridget Shipley would have been right at the top. I suspected Sienna wasn’t likely to forgive her, either, if she were to ever find her way out from under the mountain of trouble she was presently buried in.

  “I’m just glad you saw fit to come back to us now, when we need you most,” Shipley said, smiling thinly. Sanctimonious, of course. A true politician, this
one.

  “Well, I might have been around more if I felt like I was welcome here.” I said that with the dryness of a good sherry.

  “You are more than welcome here, of course.” She didn’t bat an eye. Provided this incident resolved well, and with a decent helping of assistance from her party, she’d probably be a contender to Gondry in the next primaries—assuming Gondry continued to fumble around in the dark like a monkey seeking a football to hump (and I figured that was a fair assumption).

  “Well, I don’t like to travel anywhere alone,” I said, turning to watch Augustus and Jamal coming down the stairs, Taneshia behind them. Friday had the luggage, and he was just behind them. Olivia Bracket followed a step behind, with Tracy bringing up the rear.

  I frowned. Where was Scott? And Greg Vansen?

  “And family is important to me,” I said, offhand, trying to complete my snide insult of the governor. I wasn’t sure it hit home, because she had a wicked good poker face. Or maybe just passed on the opportunity to insult me since I was here to help her.

  “You’ve built quite the team,” she said. “I remember when it was … almost just you.”

  I shot her a sideways look and decided to avoid the topic of Sienna, because … well, two could play at this politeness game. “I still have elements of a second team in position on the West Coast. Protecting one of our people who’s injured.”

  “I heard about that,” Shipley said, falling into line beside me as I stepped away to let the others disembark. “And the incident in New York, and with the bridge in Maryland—it’s got people on edge.” She met my eyes, still betraying nothing. If she was panicking, she was good at keeping a steel lid over it.

  “Well, they have good reason to panic,” I said. “Between the Enterprise incident and the bridge, that’s a lot of dead and injured. I’m sure seeing one of the perpetrators show up here isn’t helping you keep things calm.”