The Operator

by Kim Harrison

  “Why not,” she said, and LB frowned, clearly thinking it was a mistake.

  “It might knock you out,” Silas said, and her eyes slid to him, drawn by the rattle of pills as he wrangled the safety seal off.

  “Nicotine and now barbiturates?” LB asked. “Why didn’t you just get some nicotine caps and let her shoot up with them?”

  “I’ve got my reasons,” Silas said, head down as he jiggled two into his palm.

  Head aching, Peri grabbed the bottle instead of the two pills, shaking them into her mouth like candy.

  “That’s why,” Silas said when she handed the half-empty bottle back and he dropped the original two pills back into it. “That’s too many,” he added, voice resigned.

  Peri tugged her afghan closer. “You got anything to wash it down with?”

  “Well . . .” Silas hedged, a bottle of what looked like cough syrup in his hand. He started to put it back in the bag, and Peri snatched it out of his grip. Her stomach clenched, and she gritted her teeth as the click-click of the seal breaking seemed to hurt her skull. It was getting harder to focus, and a lethargic, hot sensation was coursing through her muscles, making them feel as if they weren’t her own.

  “You’re going to kill yourself taking it all at once like that,” Silas said, but that he was even saying it meant she hadn’t crossed the line—yet.

  “Then at least it will be over.” Ignoring LB’s worried frown, she tilted her head back and the sweet, syrupy alcohol slipped down. It burned, tripping her gag reflex. She coughed, fending off Silas’s help as her eyes watered.

  “She shouldn’t be mixing those,” LB said, and Silas patted her back.

  “I know, but she’s going to throw up in about fifteen minutes,” he predicted. “What gets into her system between now and then isn’t going to kill her. Probably.”

  Her foot began to shake. At this point, she wasn’t sure whether it was the withdrawal or the meds. Frankly, she didn’t care. Vertigo hit her, and she reached for the stability of the couch’s arm. “It’s not working,” she panted as her gut twisted. “Give me another patch.”

  “No. That’s all you get,” Silas said.

  “Give me another patch, damn it! It’s not working!” she shouted, tears springing up unbidden. She knew it was from the drugs, but nothing felt real anymore.

  “Peri, I’m sorry! This is what I have,” Silas said. “It’s going to get better. I promise.”

  Peri pulled her eyes from the bag, knowing there was nothing in it that could help her. “I’ve only had two doses. Why is it this bad?” she whispered. Her heart hammered and she looked at the ceiling, feeling the room spin. “It shouldn’t be this bad.”

  “I’m sorry, Peri. I’d do this for you if I could.”

  His eyes held an unexpected vulnerability, and she quashed her emotion as the bolts in her life slid to a new, locked position. She was not going to kick this, and she was not going to give in. Adrenaline pushed into her, and her stomach clenched. “It’s not working, Silas,” she moaned. “I can’t do this again. I can’t!”

  “It will be okay,” he soothed, pulling her back to his front, holding her to keep her from shaking. From the corner of the room, Jack watched, hearing the lie as well. “I promise.”

  But she wasn’t going to make it. Her hands were sweating, and she looked at them, shocked. They had gone pale. The adrenaline wasn’t mixing well with whatever was in that cough syrup. Her stomach cramped, and she held her breath. Her pulse was too fast, and she suddenly realized she was going to pass out.

  “Peri!” Silas shouted as her body went slack.

  Eyes closed, she distantly heard LB swear, and then her head swung forward. Arms limp, she felt herself shifted to the couch, the musty cushions pillowing her—almost like clouds.

  “Shit, that was fast. She’s going,” someone said.

  “Going? Going where?” another voice said, frantic.

  “Under the ground, you idiot.” It was LB, but she couldn’t open her eyes. “Pick her up. Keep her awake. Slap her if you have to. How much does she usually get?”

  “A half cc. No, she’s got this!” Silas exclaimed as she felt herself picked up, and the cloud cushions became arms, thick and warm, holding her as if she would break. But she had broken already, feeling her skin crack and fall away, the pieces slipping to the floor, one by one. She could hear them hit and shatter like ice.

  “I don’t know what this shit is, but she can’t quit cold. Look at her. I’m giving her the Evocane. Now.”

  Evocane? “Silas?” Shaking violently, she cracked her eyes. She wasn’t in pieces. Her skin was still whole. Silas was holding her, his expression twisted in fear for her. “You have Evocane,” she said, the need rising from everywhere, crushing the shakes and fatigue.

  LB was standing over them, his eyes wide in surprise. “My God. I thought she was gone.”

  “She’s tougher than you think,” Silas said, and she grunted when he shifted her in his arms, and pins and needles stabbed her.

  In LB’s hand was a vial.

  Her breath came in harsh, and her heart stuttered. “You have Evocane!” she exclaimed in an ugly rasp. She tried to sit up, get out of Silas’s arms. But her muscles failed her, and all she managed was to spill out of his arms and hit the floor. Pain shot from her hip to her skull, clearing her mind for a half second. He had what she needed, and with a mindless drive, she sprang at him.

  “Peri!” Silas exclaimed, lunging after her. His thick arm wrapped around her waist as she lurched for LB, and she and Silas fell back, hard against the cement floor.

  “Give it to me!” she screamed, trying to claw her way out from under him. “I can smell it! Give me the fucking Evocane!”

  LB watched, wide-eyed, what she needed in his hand. “Okay. Right. Calm down.”

  Silas grunted as her elbow hit his face. She struggled to be free, but he wrapped his legs around her in a wrestler hold, shifting his grip and forcing her to be still. “Do it,” he grunted.

  “Give it to me!” she raged, the need unbearable. But she couldn’t move, bound by Silas’s arms and legs, and she began to cry in frustration. “You little bastard! Give it to me!”

  LB crouched down in front of her, a wary distance between them. “Promise to hold still, and I’ll give it to you.”

  She forced herself to stop. She was whimpering, hating it as she watched LB push her sleeve up. “Please hurry,” she begged, vertigo fighting with the shakes to see which could kill her first. If she could ever see straight again, she was going to kill Bill.

  “Shit, man. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone so white and still be alive.” With a casual expertise, LB filled a syringe and jabbed her. “You tell me if you’re going to blow, okay?”

  With three beats of her heart, peace flooded into her. Immediately she relaxed, and Silas’s arms went from confining to comforting. “Oh, God,” she slurred as he felt the difference and he sat up, pulling her into his lap and rocking her, right there on the floor. Her eyes closed at the relief of no pain. And then she started to cry.

  “No . . . I didn’t want this,” she said, head down to hide her heartache and guilt. “I was this close! Damn it, Silas, I was right there . . .”

  “You were there all right.” LB stood, looking at the vial with a new respect. “You were this close to dying. Damn, this is some wicked dragon shit.”

  Her head jerked up, and a cool certainty filled her, pushing out her misery. “That’s mine,” she said, voice utterly devoid of anything but a hard intent.

  Silas slowly let go of her, and she sat herself up, her hand out until LB dropped the vial into her grip. It was cool in her fingers, and she hated how she couldn’t let go of it.

  “That’s not euphoria,” Silas said as he stood up, leaving her there alone on the floor. “It’s just the absence of pain. Peri. I’m sorry. I don’t care what it takes. You’re not doing that again. I’ll pick the addictive parts out and wean you off, but you’re not doing that ag
ain.”

  LB snapped the needle and threw it away. “All that grief, and it doesn’t do anything?”

  She shook her head, her throat tight as she scooted to put her back against the front of the couch and just breathe for a moment. Jack was gone. Hopefully for good. But she was never that lucky. She was right back at square one, and there was no way she could ever move past it. She was hooked. The Evocane was warming in her grip, but she couldn’t let go of it. By her estimation, there was only five more days’ worth in it—five more days until she had to decide who was going to hold her leash. Damn you, Bill. “Where’s the rest?”

  “Ahhh . . .”

  Her focus sharpened. “You didn’t try it, did you?”

  “No,” LB reassured her, but the vial wasn’t full.

  “Where is the rest?” she demanded. “There should be more.”

  Silas stood, giving her shoulder a squeeze. “We’ve been trying to duplicate it.”

  “You’re wasting it?” Peri asked, suddenly concerned.

  LB shrugged. “It’s not a waste if we can duplicate it.”

  “But Bill said it was too complicated.” She was feeling better remarkably fast, and she levered herself up onto the couch as LB sat on the corner of the bed.

  “We’ve got five days,” Silas soothed. “By that time, I will have made up a modified version that will address the withdrawal. I’m sure some of the addictive additives were a safety measure to be sure you never let yourself go without it and accidentally MEP from a routine draft, but Bill made it a hundred times worse to ensure you never left him. And he’s right. I can’t duplicate it, but I don’t need to. You haven’t been accelerated, so all you need is the addictive stuff. I can do that. It’s going to be okay.” He winced, clearly not entirely happy.

  Need, she thought, thinking it was an ugly word. She hadn’t even known what it meant until now. Hope that she could be as she once was, even if that had been flawed and forgetful, seeped out of the cracks of agony, somehow making her feel worse.

  The pain was gone, but her hands were still shaking, not in withdrawal but shock. She was hooked. She couldn’t fight this, and slow, silent tears slipped from her. She let them fall, not caring whether they saw them. She was no longer in control. She no longer mattered.

  Silas’s attention sharpened on her. “I’ll crack this, Peri. I can do it.”

  But that wasn’t why she was crying. She wanted to remember her drafts. She wanted to be free of being forced to trust by necessity, not desire. And if she couldn’t have that, she wanted to have the ability to just walk away. But what she had was a horrifying need pushing her into more and more desperate acts. “Maybe I should just take the accelerator. At least then I’d have value,” she whispered.

  “Don’t.” Silas sat beside her, his weight making her slip into him. “We can get around this. I should have told you before, but I didn’t think it was going to be this bad.”

  “Bad?” she said hotly. “You think that was just . . . bad?”

  His head cocked and he jerked her into him, his relief making his mood soft. “Don’t get mad at me for my word choice,” he said as he coddled her, protesting, into his arms. “You haven’t been accelerated, so all you need is the addictive stuff. I can do that.”

  “Yes?” A glimmer of hope sparked, wavered, and threatened to go out.

  “Promise,” he said, his arms around her becoming more sure, more grateful, almost. “I should have told you earlier, but I wanted to get LB’s opinion on it first.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered, eyes closing as she gave in and felt herself melt against him, his warmth finally easing the last of the shakes. She felt loved, her emotions paper thin. Something tickled the back of her brain. His arms around her felt familiar, like home. From the year Allen had erased, she thought, swallowing hard. Why had she been so stupid? Opti was officially ended, and she was still fighting the same war.

  “You make it really hard to love you, you know that, don’t you?” Silas whispered as LB left, closing the door behind him.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-NINE

  LB’s back room seemed a lot nicer when she wasn’t half-delusional with withdrawal, and Peri sat on the edge of the bed in a borrowed T-shirt and dried her hair as she waited for Silas to come back with her clean clothes and maybe some of that pasta she could smell. The soft conversation from the big playroom had long vanished, replaced by what sounded like a Disney movie. It was surprisingly soothing. LB had something unique here. It wasn’t a family. It was bigger than that. A community, maybe?

  But even as she thought it, her contentment slowly shifted to an uncomfortable unease. Stretching, she reached for her phone on the bedside table, and the flexible glass lit up at her touch. She had only twenty-four hours before withdrawal hit her again. Twenty-four hours, and way too much to do.

  Tossing the towel to the couch, she finger-combed her hair, wondering whether getting Bill hooked on the stuff might be a suitable revenge—the son of a mother-sucking ass-wipe bastard.

  She felt as if she’d been beaten up, making it hard to tell what was symptomatic of trying to fight her addiction, and what was from the bumpy car chase. She wanted to go out and find Silas, but not dressed only in a T-shirt, so she settled back to wait. Her diary still lay at the foot of the bed, and after a moment she pulled it close, wondering whether LB had succumbed to reading it in her absence when more pages slipped free, needing to be jammed back in place like her forgotten memories in her mind.

  Settling back against the headboard, she turned to the last unread pages.

  Silas and I spent the weekend together, sort of a retreat before the last push and the team is chosen. It’s what I’ve been working my entire adult life for, and I’ve never been more confident in the people I’d be working with. I trust Silas and Allen. But now I’m having doubts, not about the mission, but what it is going to do to Silas. For the first time, I’m seeing him without the shadow of Summer on him, and I don’t know if I can do this to him. Not again. He was happy yesterday, and I realize that sounds simple, but for three entire days, there was not a shadow of guilt or regret on him. It made me feel more than good that I might have had some small part in him finding that. And it wasn’t just the sex, which is never just sex for him but almost a holy commitment. It was the way he sheltered his happiness, as if he knew it wasn’t going to last and he would be lost and alone again.

  Allen will be inserted into Opti with me, but Silas, especially now, with the emotional ties we’ve been making, will be relegated to the background. I don’t know if I can ask him to bear the burden of remembering when I forget.

  But it’s too late now. I can’t back out, and certainly not because I might love someone. I’m going to give this journal to Silas so he can look back at it and know that what we had was real even if I don’t remember it. I hope it helps him understand so he won’t wall himself off from love as he did when Summer died. Silas should have these thoughts, my thoughts, because he is, and forever will be, my anchor, the only one who I trust to remind me of who I want to be when there is nothing left.

  Please, don’t give up on me.

  Peri swallowed. She should’ve walked away from the task. She should have let someone else do it. But pride had stopped her, and it had ruined too many lives, most of all Silas’s. And here she was, poised to do it again. How much pain can a soul survive?

  A soft knock jerked her head up. “Peri? You decent?” Silas said, and she flushed, jamming the diary under her pillow.

  “Come on in,” she said, and the door opened, bringing in the noise from the TV. “Mmmm, smells good,” she added, and Silas padded closer in his bare feet, his face stubbled, dressed in jeans and a raggedy borrowed T-shirt with a plate of takeout food on a Mickey Mouse platter in one hand. Their cleaned clothes were tucked under an arm, and seeing his quiet contentment, her guilt grew deeper. It hurt seeing him there, his lumpy feet poking out from under his borrowed, frayed jeans and nothing but worry in his
tired eyes. He loved her, always had, and she only now was ready to believe that she deserved it, now when she had nothing but trouble to offer him.

  She forced the thought from her, making her smile brighter. “You haven’t slept at all, have you,” she said, and he dropped their clothes on the couch before sitting down beside her.

  “Ah, not really,” he said. “Hungry?”

  She nodded. The warmth of his shoulder against hers was heady, and the soft sounds of the silverware as he shifted to arrange the plate of food on his lap pulled her eyes down in guilt. “Thank you,” she whispered, knowing she didn’t deserve it. Not after what she’d done to him, what she was going to do.

  Silas’s motions stilled. “Guilt?” he said incredulously. “For what? None of this is your fault. And it’s not like I cooked it. Just put it on a plate.”

  “But you got it for me,” she said, eyes down. She’d hurt him beyond forgiveness. She’d willingly forgot the year they’d fallen in love for the chance to bring Opti down. She’d selfishly killed their love for a chance at glory. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered, throat closing. “I can’t believe how stupid I was.”

  “Peri.” He set the plate aside and took her in an awkward hug. “This isn’t your fault.”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about,” she said into his shirt, muffled. His scent rose around and through her, and she breathed it in, willing her memory to return. Why hadn’t she made any memory knot of him? Not one?

  “Oh. That.” His chest moved as he took a deep breath. “I always figured it was my fault you asked Allen to destroy that year.”

  Eyes wet, she looked up at him, seeing the love in his eyes. “Your fault?”

  “I could have stopped the whole thing. Maybe if I had been honest with you, you wouldn’t have done it in the first place.”

  “You?” This wasn’t anything in her diary.

  His gaze dropped, the twitch in his eye pinging on her intuition. Something had happened between them, something that hadn’t gotten into the pages, had not even been hinted at. She took a slow breath, not willing to delve into it right now. “So here we are.” Hesitating, she smiled up at him as his arms slipped away. “Where exactly are we?”