Nita blinked and looked up. “Yes. And?”
“It sounds like a supervillain name,” he commented.
Nita rolled her eyes. “Well, no black market dealer uses their real name. Going by Scalpel is better than a picture of my face.”
“True, that.”
Nita posted a review of the GPS link selling her phone’s location.
You hunt me and I hunt you, in Peru or Canada. I will burn you down.
She uploaded the pictures of the murdered people, with a screenshot of her online exchange with them selling her information to lure them in. When she finished, she closed the phone and took a deep breath.
She’d killed people hunting her.
Her stomach tightened, and she straightened her back. She felt strong. She felt powerful, like she could do anything.
She kind of liked it.
And that, more than Kovit and his talk of rules, more than anything else, finally scared her. She liked feeling powerful. She liked feeling like she’d won.
Luring those men in and killing them made her feel powerful, in a twisted sort of way. In control. She wondered if this was how Kovit felt when he hurt people, this feeling of control in a world where they were almost always helpless and tied to other people’s whims. She wondered if that was why he made his own pain rather than take what already existed. She wondered if that was why she dissected.
She swallowed, and her chest tightened.
Something was really wrong with her.
“Nita?”
She shook her head. She was being silly. Why shouldn’t she feel triumphant? Why shouldn’t she be proud? She’d killed bad people. She’d sent a message.
She straightened her back. This was exactly what she wanted. She should feel proud.
“Yes?” she asked.
He opened his mouth, but she never heard what he was going to say.
Because the front door blew off its hinges.
Eighteen
NITA AND KOVIT dove in different directions as the door flew inward, followed by a rain of bullets. Kovit rolled behind the couch, and Nita ducked behind the kitchen counter.
Two figures stepped through the door, guns blazing like they were trying to make fireworks inside the deserted apartment.
Nita lay flat on the floor behind the counter, trying not to be seen. She wished she could see Kovit by the couch, because she was worried the flimsy couch fabric would afford little protection from the bullets.
She peered around the corner tentatively.
There were two people, both of them with scarves over their mouths like a Wild West film, presumably to protect them from the security cameras they thought were operational. They weren’t, Nita had checked.
One was a man, mid-twenties, white, medium-brown hair. The other was a girl, maybe Nita’s age or a little older. Also white, with dirty blond hair that was short and pressed against her head like it was painted on. A series of stud earrings and small hoops ran up one pale ear, while the other only had a single stud. There was something familiar about her, but it was hard to tell because most of her face was covered in the scarf.
The girl smiled, sharp and cruel. “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”
She hefted her gun, and narrowed her eyes as she swung it around.
How the hell had the black market found them here?
Nita tried to recall if she’d posted anything specific when she taunted the market. Were there clues to the address in the background of the pictures? But even so, they were here so fast.
Or maybe, she realized, eyes widening, they’d been tailing the group that Nita had lured here. Hunting the hunters when they realized they’d caught the scent of prey. They had probably been lurking outside the building, and waiting until the other group had caught Nita, then planning on bursting in and stealing her.
Dammit.
The girl and the man began walking forward, and Nita tensed. If they went much farther, they’d see Kovit behind the couch. And they’d have a clear shot.
She knew she was the target, but she didn’t want to find out if they’d shoot anyone with her.
Taking a deep breath, she dove out from behind the counter.
The two black market dealers spun toward her, guns blazing, but Nita was already moving, ducking around them and into the hallway outside the apartment.
They fired at her as she ran, and Nita scrambled down the hall and around the corner, toward the elevator banks.
There was no time to wait for the elevator, so she kept going, shag carpet squishing under her feet and white walls blurring past.
She pumped her body with adrenaline and cortisol, her recently enhanced muscles pushing her faster than she’d ever run before. She pounded down the hall and ducked into a stairwell. She nearly tripped and tumbled down the steps but caught herself.
Behind her, the stairwell door smashed open, and another rattle of gunfire ricocheted off the green cement walls.
Nita ducked into another floor.
She bolted down the hall, another row of doors and winding halls that looked more like a hotel than an apartment complex.
One of the doors opened.
Nita’s eyes widened as a women in a white coat came out, clipboard in hand, purse slung over her shoulder. Probably a building inspector or a real estate agent.
She blinked when she saw Nita. “Hey, you can’t be in here—”
Nita shoved her out of the way and ducked toward the open door.
Behind her, someone fired a gun.
Nita flinched.
The woman screamed as she went down, blood staining her white coat, her purse tumbling from her arm and the contents spilling across the no-longer-beige carpet. A tube of lipstick smacked into Nita’s shoe.
Nita didn’t stop.
She went through the apartment the woman had been in and straight to the window. She ripped the latch down and it swung open. She dove through, down one story and onto the pavement below.
Then she was off running again.
Surely they wouldn’t dare chase her when she was outside? There were more witnesses and potential casualties.
Her mind flashed back to the woman who’d taken a bullet meant for Nita, and she suddenly wasn’t so sure.
She needed to stop running before more people got hurt. That meant either killing her pursuers or hiding.
Killing them seemed risky, since it was two on one. Instead, she found a manhole and yanked the cover up and lowered herself down. She clung to the ladder as she went deeper into the sewer. The lid was heavy as she dragged it back over her.
She tried to breathe through her mouth because the sewer reeked, but that just meant she could taste the sewer, not just smell it. The darkness was complete—there was no light to see by, so there was no point in altering her rods and cones for better vision. Her hands were slippery on the cold metal ladder, and now that she’d stopped, she was aware of how slick with sweat she was, how loud her heartbeat was in her ears, how fast the blood was being pumped through her body.
Swallowing, she clung tighter to the ladder.
Above her, the telltale crunch of footsteps approached.
“Which way?” asked the man.
Nita narrowed her eyes. She’d assumed the man was in charge because he was older, but that clearly wasn’t the case.
“Gold, which way?” the man repeated.
“Shut up, Daniel.”
Feet scuffed against pavement. A rustle of fabric.
Light bombarded Nita from above.
“Found you.” Gold’s bandana stretched from the smile hidden beneath it.
The man grabbed Nita by the hair and yanked her out of the sewer.
Nita screamed as her scalp stretched. The human body wasn’t meant to be held by the hair, and her skin tore, blood trickling down her face and between her eyes.
Nita reached for the hands holding her, even as she shed clumps of hair, trying to loosen their grip, but another set of hands grabbed hers and yanked
them behind her back.
Her knees scraped against the pavement, and suddenly the pressure on her hair was gone and her hands were firmly bound. Nita looked up into Gold’s face.
Gold smashed the butt of her gun across Nita’s cheek.
Pain, sharp and wild and sizzling, scorched through Nita’s veins and ricocheted through her skull. She opened her mouth, and blood trickled out.
“Hello, there, healing girl.” Gold tapped a foot on the ground. “You’ve led us on a merry chase.”
In the distance, police sirens roared. Nita wondered if someone nearby had called for help after hearing all the gunshots. The apartment building she’d picked was empty—or supposed to be—but all the buildings around it weren’t. And gunshots were loud.
Gold’s eyes were cold. “You’ve made this unnecessarily messy.”
Nita’s eyes narrowed. “Why? Because you shot a civilian?”
Gold snorted. “Like you care.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Nita snapped.
“You unnaturals are all the same. Monsters through and through. Even the ones that don’t have to kill people.”
The way she said the word unnatural, so full of derision and hate, made Nita startle. She knew there were people out there who hated unnaturals. She’d grown up hearing horror stories about the Unnatural Extermination Agenda, a huge, far-too-popular hate group, and she’d seen plenty of people on TV talk about eugenics and eliminating unnaturals from genetic pools. But knowing the hate was there, seeing it on the TV, that was different than having it thrown in her face.
While Nita wasn’t going to deny the fact that she was becoming a monster, or maybe always had been, she was also very sure it had nothing to do with being an unnatural and everything to do with the life she’d lived.
“Well, I wonder what that makes you?” Nita spat. “Killing just because you can.”
“Nah, not because I can. I have orders.” Gold gave her a smile, sharp and angry. “Fabricio says you die, then you die.”
Fabricio.
Again.
That horrid little shit-weasel.
She should have added more poison to his drink.
“Whatever he’s paying you, I can double it,” Nita lied.
Gold snorted. “Nothing you could pay me would be worth getting on the bad side of Tácunan Law.”
Tácunan Law. Fabricio’s father’s firm. The one he claimed he “didn’t want to be involved with.”
Not that she’d ever believed him.
Gold cocked her gun. “We’ve got a pretty close relationship with them that’s mutually beneficial, and we’re not planning on disappointing.”
The pressure on her hands, bound behind her back, increased, and Nita bared her teeth. Gold had made a grave error if she thought she could take on Nita.
Nita might be bound, but there were things she could do. She toughened the flesh of her throat and numbed her mouth.
Then she spat stomach acid on Gold.
Gold screamed and fell back, fingers reaching up to claw her cheek and neck as the acid ate through the flimsy scarf protecting her face.
Nita ignored her and snapped her head backwards. It hit cartilage and bone as the man holding her hands screamed, nose cracking.
He released her, and Nita was stumbling to her feet and running, hands still bound behind her back.
She didn’t look back to see if they’d survived, didn’t pause as the sirens roared ever closer. Her mouth tasted like vomit, and her throat was scorched and burned from the concentrated acid. She healed it as she went, but it tingled with something in between pain and pins and needles.
Thoughts tumbled through her head in a scattered, convoluted mess as her feet pounded a panicked rhythm down one street, then another, never stopping, never faltering.
Fabricio hadn’t just put her location up online. He’d also personally hired a group of thugs to murder her. Overkill much?
Or not. Since Nita was still alive.
Nita finally ripped her hands from her bindings and made herself a promise.
Fabricio Tácunan was going to die. All hesitation, all guilt, all regret was gone. She would kill him. Even if she had to fly all the way back to Bogotá to do it.
Nineteen
NITA’S STEPS EVENTUALLY SLOWED as she rejoined the crowds on the street. Police sirens roared in the distance, and Nita knew that the shots in the apartment building had definitely been called in. The distinctive white and red of an ambulance roof was visible in the distance.
Maybe the woman who Gold had shot had survived. Maybe she’d used her cell phone to call for help, and that was why the ambulance was coming.
Nita swallowed, remembering the way she’d fallen, the spatter of blood on the carpet. The small scream and the silence.
She didn’t think the woman had survived.
Nita pushed through the crowd, cringing as other people pressed against her, a crushing wall of humanity. She’d somehow got onto a main thoroughfare, and it was awful.
She kept her head down as she walked, hoping to avoid notice. There was blood in her hair that had dried and streaked it a sticky black. She got a few strange looks, but there was nothing she could do.
The pavement was hard under her feet, and towering gray monoliths gave way to warm brick buildings. Time seemed to lose meaning in the crowd, and she wasn’t certain how long she was crushed in the masses before she escaped.
She cut down a side street, stepping in a shallow puddle that soaked through her shoe. Her breathing was still harsh, and her heart still pounded a frenetic beat as she took the stairs down to the subway. She’d pumped so many stress chemicals through her body, and now she needed to calm them. But she didn’t quite want to yet, just in case the trouble wasn’t over.
She wondered if she could live her whole life hyped up on adrenaline and cortisol. Probably not. She needed to sleep sometime.
The station was packed, and Nita had to walk to the very end of the platform to find somewhere less crowded. She leaned against a pillar and sighed. It had all been going so perfectly. Her trap had been flawless, and yes, it had been a little gorier than anticipated, though not as much as it could have been, if Kovit had been able to play with the cheese grater. But the plan had worked.
Until Gold showed up.
Nita thought of the dead woman. Her huge black eyes, wide and frightened as the bullet took her down. The image of blood soaking through her clothes and spattering the beige carpet slithered through Nita’s thoughts.
Her fists clenched at her sides, and she wished she had her scalpel in hand. She tried to imagine her dissection room, that calm, slow peace of taking a human apart, but she couldn’t seem to focus, and the images shattered before they even fully formed.
She leaned against the car door as the subway sped away from the scene.
What a mess. And this was only the beginning. There were going to be a lot more casualties before this was all over.
A thin line of worry gnawed its way through her heart. What if more people from the black market had showed up at the condo after Nita fled? Had Kovit made it out okay?
She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and texted Kovit.
I’m fine. Heading back to Adair’s place now. Did you get out okay?
A small red circle beside the text told her it was undelivered, probably because there was no service underground. She shifted, hoping he was all right.
She transferred at Union to the weird underground streetcar again.
The girl beside her on the train was clearly getting reception, and the news crackled tinnily through her earphones.
“Four are confirmed dead in an apartment building near Yonge and Eglinton. Eyewitnesses at the scene heard gunshots and called the police, who arrived on scene to find several dead. One witness caught a cell phone video of a teenage girl fleeing the scene, pursued by two masked, armed assailants. While police are still refraining from comment, one spokeswoman says that they can’t rule out gan
g-related violence.”
Cell phone video. Nita rubbed the little spot between the bridge of her nose and the base of her eyebrow that was always sore. She tried to think if she’d done anything incriminating, but all she could think of was that there were going to be more videos of her online.
She got off at Bathurst and trudged back to the pawnshop.
The OPEN sign was on, and Nita stepped in warily. Diana was sitting at the cash register, curled on a chair with her laptop in her lap.
She looked up when Nita came in. “Oh, hi.”
“Hey.”
“You okay?” Diana asked, frowning at the dried blood on Nita.
“Fine.” Nita didn’t want to deal with questions, so she redirected. “Any luck decrypting?”
“Not yet.” She held up an empty tub of mint ice cream. “But I did order more ice cream for the store. We’re out, and I swear Adair eats a pint a day.”
Nita stared at the other girl and her tub of ice cream vacantly for a moment before saying, “Uh. Okay.” Another short pause, because she couldn’t think of anything else to say to that. “I’m going upstairs now.”
Before Diana could respond, Nita was halfway up the stairs. She entered the empty bedroom and let out a breath, taking comfort in the familiar peeling walls and the leaky ceiling.
She flopped onto the bed and closed her eyes.
She tried to tell herself everything was going according to plan. She’d made a show for the black market. So what if Fabricio had hired other people? She’d kill them too. They’d just be more bricks in her reputation.
But she already felt tired, and the thought of making another plan and killing more people wasn’t as appealing as it had been yesterday. It just seemed endless. How many times would she need to do this before it actually had a visible impact?
And next time, the victims probably wouldn’t be smart enough to bite their own tongues off and kill themselves. Nita really didn’t want to see the fallout of Kovit with a cheese grater.
She ran her hands over her face. She was supposed to be this badass the market would fear. How was she supposed to inspire terror if she freaked out every time Kovit picked up a cheese grater?
She sighed and closed her eyes for a few moments, her thoughts spiraling in circles.
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