by Kim Harrison
“Reed’s here,” he said, panting into an electronic wristband; then he came at her, his hands stretched to grab. If he got a grip on her, she was done.
Shit. Peri stumbled into the bathroom, grunting as his weight slammed into her and pinned her face to the wall. Cat litter ground under her feet as she flung her head back into him.
He cried out, grip loosening. Peri dropped, her hand reaching for her knife. He followed her down, pinning her neck to the floor with a wide, heavy hand, wedging the knife from her with the other. There was blood on him. She’d broken his nose.
“Peri, do something!” Jack shouted, and she grabbed a handful of cat litter and threw it at the sound of the man’s grunting breath.
“Bitch!” he exclaimed, and his hand lifted. Peri dragged herself upright, grasping the lid to the toilet tank and swinging it at him. He was halfway to a stand, and it hit his head with a dull thwap, the weight of it spinning Peri full-circle to crash into the counter. Her hands went numb and the lid fell from her to break into two pieces. She slipped and went down, stifling a scream when her back hit the tub.
But the man was out cold, his cheek resting on a thin layer of cat litter soaking up the blood from his broken nose. A red lump showed at his hairline. Peri’s eyes rose to find Jack. “I didn’t like him touching your things,” she said, the absurdity of it making her eyes wide.
Smiling, he held out a hand to help her stand. She lurched up, ignoring it as she took her knife back. Her chest hurt, and not because she’d taken a foot to it. She hated Jack, hated that it felt right with him beside her.
Shaking from adrenaline, Peri shoved her knife away and staggered into the living room. Someone had to have heard that. She had to go. But as she looked at her life in a ten-by-eight-by-four-foot pile, she couldn’t focus. “My talismans,” she said, her anger growing as she saw a picture of Jack and herself in a desert, the coals of a fire behind them. She didn’t remember it, but she looked happy. All of her memories were broken and lost. “Jack, where’s the list? Did they find it?”
“I’m sorry, babe. I didn’t know this would happen.”
Frustration spun back into anger, and she rounded on him. “Where is it!” she shouted, her hands in fists as he picked up the silver frame and ran a finger down her pictured face. Tears pricked and she came close, wanting to take it from him but reluctant to break the illusion that he was holding it. For all she knew, the picture might not even exist. “Jack, where’s the list?”
He looked up, tears in his eyes. “I don’t think it’s here.”
Peri’s breath came in fast. Had it all been for nothing? “They have it?”
“No.” His gaze traveled over the destruction, clearly pained. “It’s just not . . . here.” Then: “You should have left. You waited too long. I’m sorry.”
The sound of the door opening spun her around and Jack vanished. “Silas!” Peri exclaimed as he stumbled through the door. “I can explain.”
Frightened, Silas caught his balance as Bill strode in after him. Peri slid to a halt, only now seeing that Silas’s hands were cuffed before him.
“Then he wasn’t lying that you’re here on your own. Curious,” Bill said, looking menacing in his three-piece suit and expensive shoes, a gun pointed at one of Silas’s kidneys. “If you jump, I shoot him in the new draft and he dies. Very fast.” Bill is an anchor? It was the only way he’d know if there was a draft or not.
“I shouldn’t have left you, Peri,” Silas said, his eyes haunted. “I’m sorry.”
From the hall, Allen’s irate voice rose, saying, “Is she down?”
Bill smirked, pushing Silas deeper into the room. “He’s afraid of you.”
“Maybe he’s the smarter man here,” Peri said as two unremarkable men in suits came in. She prayed that Howard and Taf had left. It had gone wrong, so very wrong.
The prick of a dart striking the back of her neck made her yelp, and she yanked it out, the drug taking hold as a chalky taste covered her tongue. She gripped the dart like a knife, unable to draft now if she wanted to. She turned, seeing the man she’d downed in the bathroom lower his dart gun, blood dripping from his nose as he leaned against the wall.
“Whore,” he breathed raggedly, and Peri backed to the bulletproof windows.
“Now, now,” Bill said jovially. “No need to be nasty. She’s doing what we trained her to do. Ready to learn a new trick, Peri?”
Her boots ground on the spilled dirt from her plants. “Shove it up your ass.”
Amused, Bill called loudly, “You can come in now, Allen. She can’t draft.”
Hunched awkwardly over a crutch, Allen peered in around the door. “She can still fight.”
“True.” Bill gestured to one of the men.
Adrenaline pounded through her as she spun. But it wasn’t enough. The drug spilling through her muscles like honey slowed her, and she gasped, wide-eyed, as the man shoved her face-first to the floor. He knelt on her, and her air huffed out. She was helpless as he pinned her wrist to the floor with one hand and with the other forced her free arm behind her, wrenching it up until she cried out in pain and went limp. The dart fell to the floor and was kicked away, her knife taken.
Please don’t dislocate it, please, she silently begged, as Silas protested. Her cheek pressed into the clutter, and a book she didn’t remember reading was wedged under her shoulder. She clenched her jaw, refusing to let the tears of pain blur her vision. The picture of her and Jack in the desert mocked her. Dagazes decorated the silver frame, and she felt betrayed by the happy expressions in the photograph. They were gone now. Maybe they had never really existed.
“You’re hurting her!” Silas exclaimed, and then her other wrist was cuffed to the first.
“Shut up,” Bill said, and then, lightly, “How about it, Allen? You feel safe now?”
Allen glowered. “You keep misjudging her, and she’s going to kill you.”
Peri struggled to breathe, that man’s knee still in the small of her back. She tensed at the scuff-pop of Allen hobbling closer. Working hard at it, he knelt down, and then she gasped as he pulled her head up by her hair so he could see her face.
“Hi, Peri,” he said, his anger obvious in the slant of his eyes, and suddenly she hated his smooth-shaven features and his dark gaze behind his glasses. “We could have done things the easy way. But this has its own pleasures.” Still holding her at an awkward angle, he looked at Bill. “She’s been conditioned never to work alone. Where are the rest?”
Bill turned to one of the men at the door. “Gone,” the man said, his expression suddenly worried. “We put all assets on Reed. You want me to send a car?”
“No. She’s all I really need.” Bill smiled at her, clearly pleased. “Aren’t you, kiddo.”
They got away, Peri thought, elated, and then Allen let her go.
Peri grunted as she turned the motion of her falling head into a bid for freedom. She twisted, and the man with his knee in her back sprang up and away. Allen scrambled backward, and she halted at a kneel, freezing when she heard the safeties click off. Her short hair was in her eyes, and she tossed her head, heart pounding. The drug was slowing her down, but she could still move.
“You think I won’t remember this?” she intoned, eyes fixed on Bill as she stood. “I’ll never accept Allen as my anchor.”
Bill looked at Silas as if they’d already had this conversation. “No matter. We’ll have this all fixed by tomorrow, thanks to Dr. Denier. We’ll have you up and working in no time. I know it’s what you love, and I’m going to give it all back to you.”
“I’m not a part of this,” Silas seethed. “They’re using my techniques, perverting them.” He glared at the man with the handgun who jabbed him to be quiet.
Bill checked his phone, nodding as if pleased. “By this time tomorrow, maybe the next day, you will be back to your usual self, and any latent memories that might surface will have Silas’s face for Allen’s actions. You know what your first task will be? F
ind and kill Silas. You’ll enjoy it. Be driven to break the rules to do it.”
“You can’t do that,” Peri said, but Bill’s satisfaction said otherwise.
“We can.” Bill checked his phone again before tucking it away. “But a little housecleaning will make it more effective. Allen?”
“Keep her off me,” Allen muttered, and Peri’s chin lifted when the guy she’d knocked out in the bathroom stepped behind her, pulling her arms up until she flinched.
“Much of what Silas pioneered to buffer drafters from long-term memory loss has a wider potential in designing more efficient agents,” Bill said.
“You mean brainwashed dolls,” Peri accused, not liking Allen picking through the rubble of her life.
“If you like, but very dangerous dolls. It never lasted long with you, though.”
Her breath came fast as Allen straightened with the picture of Jack and herself.
“We get around that by artificially scrubbing several weeks at the end of a draft, but you kept coming back from more and more difficult assignments intact, without a need to jump to survive them. Unfortunately, if you don’t draft, we can’t clean house. That’s why we took matters into our own hands at Overdraft. It might have worked even then. But Jack screwed it up. He’s not good enough for you anymore.”
My God. How long have they been doing this? Is anyone at Opti not corrupt?
Allen pulled out the picture and let the frame drop to dent the wood floor. “If we destroy everything that links you to your past, you might never recall anything. It works best if you see the destruction.” He turned to his cohorts, expression ugly. “Burning works.”
She clenched her jaw when he folded the picture in two, knowing what was going to happen next. “New Year’s, right?” Allen said. “I never liked Jack. He thought he was smarter than me. Guess not.”
“Start with this,” Bill said, tossing a loose-leaf journal to land at Allen’s feet with a sliding hiss of sound. It was her diary—a year’s worth at least.
“Bastard,” she whispered as Allen tucked the photo in a pocket and began ripping pages out. “You’re all bastards. I’m not going to forget this.”
“Today should be no different from last week,” Bill said, throwing a lighter to Allen.
Silas shrugged off his captor’s hand. “Peri, I’m sorry!” he said, but she didn’t know what for. It wasn’t his fault. It was hers for having gotten caught. Her jaw clenched as Allen lit a corner of the book, the flame rising up on the outside, black smoke falling from the inner pages. He dropped it, and it flared before subsiding to a low burn that would choke itself if left alone. But he didn’t leave it alone, adding torn pages one by one.
“Light it up,” Bill said, a thick hand waving to encompass the entire apartment. Peri watched helplessly as men scampered like rats over the apartment, disconnecting the smoke alarms and bringing back more of her life to drop on the growing pile. The sliding doors to the balcony were retracted into the walls, and the smoke escaped, taking with it her desire to fight.
“There will be nothing left of your past, Peri,” Bill said in the new chill sweeping in, and Peri bowed her head to the floor in grief. “I gave it to you, and now I’m taking it back. I’ll give you a new one, a better one. You will accept the past we give you without question. You will take the jobs that Allen brings you, and you will never think twice about their validity.”
“You bastard,” Peri whispered. “You won’t walk away from this. I promise you.”
“No,” he said, and she steeled herself when he reached out a fleshy ringed finger and touched her cheek. “I promise you,” he said. “You should be glad you’re my best or you would’ve ended up like poor Jack.”
She seethed, coughing on the smoke as she knelt before him, and he turned to leave. Allen hesitated to follow. “You want me to save anything? Her clothes, maybe?” he asked.
Bill paused on the threshold, giving Silas a long look. “Just the cookbooks and yarn. I believe we still have that yarn bag she left at the airport.” Turning, he smiled at Peri. “Mustn’t let those Opti-approved obsessive-compulsive stress relievers go by the wayside. I like your hair long, though. Allen, implant the thought that she likes it that way.”
“You can’t do this!” she shouted, starting at the prick of another dart. A part of her was victorious—they were afraid of her—bound and darted, they were still afraid of her.
“Get him!” someone yelled, and she blinked the smoke from her eyes as she realized that Silas had shoved Allen down and run. He’d left her. Again.
“Let him go,” Bill said, bringing everyone to a halt. “Finding him will be part of her conditioning. Someone called in the smoke. City services are on the way. Everyone out.”
She was pulled to her feet, and she fought to stay where she was, with her past. Her shoulder burned as she fell on the heated picture frame, and she rolled from the flames. “Get off me!” she screamed when another dart struck her.
And then everything went blessedly away.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-NINE
Waking up to a cat purring on your chest isn’t the worst way to start the day. Peri had been drowsing the last half hour, listening to her upstairs neighbors move from the bathroom to the kitchen and finally to the parking lot six feet from the patio of her new Opti-issued apartment. When the doors of the couple’s car had finally slammed and the battery-powered vehicle hummed away, she’d thought she might get a few more minutes of sleep.
But when a cat wants you up, you have no choice.
“Carnac!” Peri yelped when sharp nails made it through the covers, and the orange cat leapt from her, clawing her stomach even deeper. “Bossy cat!” she exclaimed, sitting up and pushing aside the covers, and then her nightshirt, to see the little red marks. Carnac stood by the open bedroom door, his tail switching and ears slantwise.
Immediately Peri relented, trilling to coax him back. The fickle cat jumped onto the bed, bumping his head under her hand in the hopes of some breakfast. “How’s my old tom?” Peri said, breathing in his sweet-smelling kitty fur and fingering the ornate collar embroidered with red Xs and the name that she’d found him with.
The cat was the only thing that felt real to her, which was odd, since he was a stray she’d found hiding in the bushes outside her building, walking up to her and into her apartment as if he belonged. She loved him for it, all the while harboring hope that his real owners would never claim him. It felt good that the found-cat fliers she’d reluctantly put up last month were slowly being buried beneath band fliers and car-for-sale ads.
“Hungry?” Peri asked as she held him up to look him in the eye. The cat refused to make eye contact, but the purrs never ceased. She’d gotten a clean bill of health weeks ago from Opti’s physical guys. Her psych review was this morning, and she wasn’t sure how she felt. Excited, yes, but despite everyone’s positive words, she still felt the cracks in her threatening to split wide open, even after six weeks.
Staring at the bathroom mirror, she fingered the tips of her shoulder-length hair, wondering why she’d ever cut it. It was taking forever to grow back out. But Allen liked it long. A smile flitted across her face as she thought of her anchor. His Flexicast was coming off today, timed perfectly with the psych eval. Allen had come out of their last task with a torn ACL, broken fingers, and a shot foot. It had been a bad task—everything had gone wrong.
Peri’s jaw clenched as she started the shower, her hatred for the alliance operative who’d tried to kill them making her motions sharp as she stepped into the hot water and scrubbed her scalp. Silas Orion Denier. He’d tried to kill Allen. Saving him had taken every last scrap of memory of their three years together, and seeing Allen’s hesitancy toward her, even now, hurt.
She lingered under the hot water, carefully feeling the odd burn on her shoulder. It was the only physical mark she had of the ordeal, and even that was fading. Opti hadn’t found a lead on Silas yet, or at least, they hadn’t told her of one.
It rankled Peri that Silas was free, and she and Allen were struggling to put their lives back together.
Peri turned the water off and got out. The towel was rough, and after a token scrub at her hair, she wrapped it around herself and padded barefoot into the bedroom. Her life was coming together at the pace of a glacier thawing, but some of that might be her fault, since she’d insisted on moving from Opti’s rehab to her own new apartment instead of sharing one with Allen. Bill hadn’t been pleased, but when Allen had agreed she needed time, their handler had okayed her own place. Trouble was, now that she had it, she was reluctant to let it go.
Her frown deepened as she finger-combed her hair. Allen had defragmented what he could of the task, and the memory of Silas’s smug smile when he pushed Allen through the window and then over the balcony of her old apartment still haunted her. There was a gap after that since Allen hadn’t seen what happened, but the short of it was that Silas had escaped. That Opti wasn’t doing anything to find him made her more than angry.
“Give me a sec, Carnac,” she said, grabbing a pair of jeans and a black sweater, as the cat complained over his empty bowl. It was the only thing in her closet she liked. She dearly wanted to go shopping, but every time she set aside an afternoon, something came up. “What was I thinking?” she said as she held up a blue blouse with red flowers on it. Maybe she’d been channeling her mother when she’d bought all the stripes and patterns.
My boots are nice, though, she thought as she sat on the edge of the bed and pulled them to her knees. The dull ping of the doorbell sounded, and Carnac ran out, tail up straight. “Coming!” she shouted, looping her pendant pen around her neck before going into the living room. The blinds were closed at the patio door, and spotlights glowed on her shelf of talismans. None of them called to her. Even the picture of Allen and her standing before a sunrise over a beach last New Year’s didn’t reach her soul. It was depressing, but she couldn’t let go of the hope that someday one of them would do its job and help her remember.