When Villains Rise

by Rebecca Schaeffer

  “Good morning,” she said, her voice still rough.

  “Morning.” Kovit smiled softly. “That looks uncomfortable.”

  “That’s because it is.” Gold’s eyes were cold. “Which you already know, because you can feel my pain.”

  Kovit’s smile fell a little. He fumbled for a moment and pulled his switchblade out.

  Gold tensed and turned to Nita. “Convince him to kill me after all?”

  Kovit tensed. “I’m not going to hurt you, May.”

  She raised her eyebrow at the switchblade.

  “For the duct tape,” he explained. “I’m going to redo it so it’s more comfortable.”

  He knelt down beside her and carefully cut her bindings, then pocketed the blade. Nita went to Gold’s other side, and they each took an arm and helped her to her feet.

  “This way.” Nita pushed Gold toward a chair on the other side of the room.

  Gold stumbled forward. She grinned, sharp and cruel. “I feel like I’m on my death walk. You know, right before they lead the prisoners to the electric chair.”

  Nita sighed. “Do you ever shut up?”

  “I try to annoy my captors as much as possible.” Gold’s eyes narrowed as she smiled at Nita. “Though I suppose you wouldn’t understand what it’s like to be a prisoner, would you?”

  Nita stiffened, but didn’t rise to the bait.

  They retied Gold together, and Nita tugged Kovit away before Gold could say anything else incendiary. Gold was far too good at hurting Kovit, and he had enough to deal with today.

  They went and checked on Fabricio before they left.

  Nita pushed open the pastel blue door to Fabricio’s room, and Fabricio raised his head. They’d left him tied to his chair all night, and there were circles under his eyes that told her that he hadn’t slept much. Small cracked flakes of scabs had fallen off and covered Fabricio’s pants like tiny bugs. Nita kept her eyes from straying to his hands. She didn’t want to see what they looked like.

  “Good morning.” Nita’s voice was forced cheery. The pizza lay on the floor where she’d left it the night before, and she picked a piece up and shoved it in his mouth. “Breakfast time.”

  Fabricio’s huge blue-gray eyes looked at Nita steadily. Judgingly. They stared right into her soul, and they found her wanting.

  It made her want to poke them out.

  Nita blinked at the sudden, violent urge. Hadn’t she once had nightmares about being forced to rip Fabricio’s eyes out? And now she fantasized about it. How times had changed.

  She turned away before Fabricio could say anything, assured that he was still trapped and wouldn’t be making any escape attempts. She locked the door, just in case.

  She nodded to Kovit when she returned to the lobby. “Ready?”

  He gave her a tentative smile. “As I’ll ever be.”

  They left the apartment and walked to the mall at Yonge and Eglinton—Nita had picked one of the few landmarks she knew, and part of her was a bit uneasy at the thought of meeting so close to home. Kovit stopped partway, so that if his sister was planning to turn him over, only Nita would get in trouble.

  When Nita was small, her mother used to teach her tips and tricks for spotting INHUP agents, spies—people who didn’t belong. How to tell if you were walking into a setup. First, go early, or have someone else go early. See who’s there. Are they still there, doing the same things, half an hour later when the meetup is? How long does it really take to read the newspaper on a park bench, after all?

  So Nita went early. She entered the mall beside the Pickle Barrel where they were supposed to meet up, and casually people-watched. A hostess texted at the counter of the restaurant, and an old man drank coffee by the front window. Past them, in the bookstore across the way, a man with large round glasses browsed the front tables. Nita skimmed the titles, but nothing interested her. She continued past into the mall proper. It was early enough in the morning on a weekday that there weren’t too many browsers, mostly overcaffeinated retail staff.

  Nita bought a bagel at a small stand and had them put it in a larger bag, so it looked like she’d been shopping. She was about to loop back around and return the way she’d come when she noticed that someone was following her around. She paused at a toy store and glanced at his reflection in the window. It was the man from the bookstore.

  But why? She hadn’t done anything to indicate she was the one meeting Kovit’s sister, so if INHUP agents had been set up here, they shouldn’t have marked her as worth watching yet.

  Unless he wasn’t an INHUP agent.

  Nita’s fingers tightened on her bag, and she turned sharply away. She needed to deal with this, find out who this person was, and handle him. In private.

  Her sneakers squeaked softly on the polished floors, and she made a left, following the sign for the bathrooms down a long concrete corridor between a shoe store and a makeup store.

  The man followed, slow and sure.

  INHUP agent or black market hunter. But if he was a black market hunter, how had he found her? A sick feeling twisted in Nita’s stomach. INHUP had sold her location out before. They could have done it again.

  Except INHUP didn’t know who was meeting Patchaya Vidthuvitsai. So they couldn’t have sold her out this time.

  Nita kept her pace even as she turned a corner and waited there. The bathrooms were just ahead, wide doors displaying clean white porcelain and pastel blue stalls. She could hear a fan going, but there didn’t seem to be anyone here. It was too early on a weekday. Practically empty.

  That was fine by her.

  The man turned the corner and jerked back, clearly not expecting Nita to be waiting.

  She smiled at him, all sugar. “Why are you following me?”

  “I’m not?” He adjusted his glasses and smiled.

  “But you are.”

  He stared at her, then looked down the hall, noticing the deserted bathroom. Since they’d turned, they weren’t visible from the main part of the mall. Then he smiled.

  “Stupid girl.” He took out a knife. “You shouldn’t confront men in dark alleys. I’m going to make so much money off of you.”

  Ah. He was another black market dealer, not an undercover INHUP agent. That was a relief. Her meeting with Patchaya wasn’t ruined yet.

  Nita smiled at him, hard and sharp. “Stupid boy. Don’t follow people into dark alleys.”

  She brought her scalpel up from where she was hiding it and jabbed it into his inner thigh, severing his artery and slicing off part of a very tender area in one single motion.

  The man jerked, gasping and opening his mouth to scream, but Nita was faster, jamming her bag with its bagel into his mouth and muffling the sound.

  He fell backwards into the wall, blood soaking quickly through his pants, and Nita muttered to herself in irritation as he bled out. She grabbed his body under the arms and dragged him toward the washroom. He jerked and struggled, but it was pointless. Nita had gotten rid of her myostatin, so her muscles had no limit on how strong they could get, and she had been training them. She had superhuman strength, and he was dying of blood loss.

  She shoved him in a stall, and he lolled against the wall, eyes glassy and vacant, mouth still stuffed with bagel. Frowning, she took the bagel bag, flushed the receipt and bag down the toilet, then soaked the bagel until it was a soggy disgusting mess, ripped it into pieces, and flushed it too. She didn’t want anything to be able to tie her to his death.

  She locked the stall from the inside and wiggled across the floor into the neighboring stall to avoid crawling through the trail of blood. After exiting the stall, she grabbed water and paper towels and mopped up the bloody trail on the concrete.

  As she scrubbed, anger bubbled in her chest. She hadn’t needed this complication today. She didn’t want to have to deal with this. It hadn’t taken her long to handle—she should probably be disturbed by that, it was probably a bad sign how efficient she’d become at taking out black market dealers, but she
didn’t mind the efficiency she’d gained. She didn’t even feel guilty about it anymore, it was just another task that simply had to be completed.

  No, what pissed her off about all this was the fact that she was so notorious now that she couldn’t walk outside for fifteen minutes without attracting a hunter.

  She threw the bloody paper towels in the trash and then covered them with clean ones. She needed to leave Toronto. This city was a death trap for her.

  Part of her wanted to stay, to take every single one of these dealers out, to wreak havoc on all of them for trying to kill her and sell her. But she’d tried that, and it had only made things worse. She needed to be smart about this, and being smart meant that she had to think big, plan ahead, and not just murder everyone in her way. She needed to make them all too afraid to try to kill her.

  And for that, she needed Fabricio’s information. And she needed Kovit’s help—she couldn’t afford for him to have the whole planet trying to murder him.

  Kovit. She checked the time and swore, leaving the bathroom at a brisk pace. She’d been delayed too much already.

  She had an INHUP agent to meet.

  Eight

  AS SHE NEARED the Pickle Barrel, she noticed that the old man was still sitting with his breakfast in the window to the restaurant, the hostess was still texting. The man looking at books was gone of course, dead in the bathroom. Nita eyed the hostess and the man eating breakfast, but didn’t let her gaze linger. There was no way to know if they were INHUP.

  In front of the Pickle Barrel stood a woman. She was short, barely five feet, with long black hair pulled into a professional bun at the nape of her neck. Her brown skin was the same warm shade as Kovit’s, and she shared his striking eyebrows and black eyes.

  Nita let out a breath. Patchaya Vidthuvitsai had come.

  But the question was, had she been followed? And if she had, was she the one instigating it, or was INHUP doing it independently of her?

  You’re being paranoid again, one part of her mind whispered.

  Better to be safe than sorry . . . And you were just followed and had to murder someone and hide a body in a bathroom. Is it really paranoia when it happens?

  Touché, brain, touché.

  So she casually walked by and didn’t even look up as she passed Kovit’s sister. Once outside the mall, she tipped her head back and looked around. There was construction on the opposite side of the street, but the subway entrance was clear.

  Nita crossed the street and stood under the shelter of a mesh fence, pulled out her phone, and texted the same number she’d used last night: The subway entrance across the street.

  A few moments later, Patchaya left the mall and made her way to the streetlights. As she waited for the lights to change, the man who’d been eating breakfast at the Pickle Barrel came out the front door of the shopping mall.

  Nita’s eyes narrowed. It didn’t necessarily mean anything. But Nita didn’t stay alive by assuming the best. And she’d already had one brush with hunters today.

  Patchaya crossed the street and approached the entrance to the subway. Nita stood just inside, out of view of the man following.

  When Patchaya approached, Nita reached up and plucked her cell phone from her hand.

  Patchaya spun to Nita, and Nita tossed the phone over her shoulder into the construction site. “You can come back for it later.”

  Then she grabbed the INHUP agent’s hand and tugged her into the subway station.

  “That wasn’t necessary,” Patchaya protested as Nita led the way down the dirty concrete stairs and into the depths of underground. The smell of industrial cleaner and urine mixed together with the occasional whiff of overperfumed commuter.

  Nita shrugged. “Better safe than sorry.”

  On the platform, Nita pulled them onto a train as the doors opened. A few people got off, but it was mostly empty. She turned back to the stairs as the doors rattled closed, and nudged Kovit’s sister.

  “Do you know that man?” she asked.

  The man from the Pickle Barrel descended the stairs, and Nita watched Patchaya for her response. Kovit’s sister shook her head. “No. Should I?”

  As the train pulled away, the man sat on one of the metal benches and opened a book and began to read, seeming totally unconcerned with the world.

  Nita sighed. She really was getting paranoid.

  Patchaya smiled slightly, an ironic twist to her lips. “Did you think we were being followed?”

  “Can’t be too careful.” Nita gestured to an empty pair of seats, faded red fabric worn to nothing in several places. “Especially given the conversation topic.”

  “I can understand that,” Patchaya said as they sat down. “I’m sure a lot of people in my office would be very angry if they found out about this meeting.”

  Her English had a faint accent, one very different from Kovit’s. Kovit had learned English in the States from a young age, so he sounded like he was from somewhere on the East Coast. But his sister’s accent wasn’t like anything Nita had heard before, like each syllable was being emphasized a little more than it should.

  “But INHUP doesn’t have the manpower to follow me right now, even if they suspected something,” Patchaya continued. “All available agents are working on another case right now. No one’s going to be monitoring me.”

  Nita tilted her head, curious. “What are they working on?”

  “Two agents were kidnapped yesterday, but only one escaped. We’re trying to find the missing one.”

  Nita looked away, part of her mind reeling that it was really only yesterday she’d orchestrated that kidnapping. The arrest, confrontation with Henry, then with Adair, catching Fabricio—so much had happened in between that it felt like a lifetime ago.

  She stared at her hands on her lap. The agent Patchaya was looking for was dead. He’d been tortured, mutilated, and murdered by Kovit in one of Nita’s plans for capturing Fabricio that had gone terribly wrong. Not that she could ever admit it.

  “Did—Do you know the agent?” Nita asked.

  “Yeah. I know him.” Patchaya gave Nita a strained smile. “I’m supposed to be working on this unicorn murder case in Montreal, but I was secretly glad you gave me an excuse to come back to Toronto and see how the search for Bran was coming.”

  “Oh.” Nita looked at her fingers on her lap, trying not to imagine how terrible Kovit would feel if he discovered he’d tortured and murdered his sister’s friend.

  Nita decided it was best to change the topic before it got dangerous. She cleared her throat. “So, Agent Vidthuvitsai—”

  “Patchaya. Or Pat.”

  “Patchaya.” Nita corrected herself.

  “And you are?”

  Nita considered how much to say, and then settled on “I’m a friend of Kovit’s.”

  Patchaya let out a shaky half laugh. She brushed a hair from her face with a trembling hand.

  Nita blinked slowly. “Are you okay?”

  Patchaya nodded sharply. “I’m fine. It’s just been a long time since I heard his name. Not since . . .”

  Not since their mother was killed and Kovit was left alone, ten years old and frightened, on the streets of Bangkok to fend for himself.

  “How is he?” Patchaya asked, finally looking up.

  Nita smiled softly. “He’s all right.”

  “Is he . . .” She choked, as if she couldn’t get the words out.

  “Is he what?”

  “He was always such a thoughtful child, you know. He’d do anything for his friends. He always tried to comfort me when I was scared, even though he didn’t understand what was happening.” Patchaya swallowed heavily. “I hoped the world wouldn’t change him, that what he was wouldn’t warp him. That he wouldn’t turn out like other zannies. That he wouldn’t become like our mother.”

  A weird mixture of guilt and nausea bubbled in her stomach. “Oh.”

  Patchaya took a deep breath and met Nita’s eyes. “Did he turn out okay? Is he good?” />
  Nita’s stomach tightened, and the lies felt sticky on her tongue, like she could taste Mirella and Fabricio and that dead INHUP agent’s screams. “He’s good. He’s a good person. He’s not like other zannies.”

  Patchaya’s shoulders slumped in relief, and she smiled up at Nita, eyes a little watery. “Good. That’s good. I’m glad.”

  She wiped her eyes softly, and Nita looked down, uneasy at her own lies. But she couldn’t ever tell the truth. That the “missing” INHUP agent Patchaya had been friends with had been gleefully tortured and murdered by Kovit. That he was still himself, but he was also exactly the monster Patchaya feared.

  Patchaya let out a short breath. “Is he here? In Toronto?”

  Nita nodded.

  “Can I see him?”

  Nita hesitated before agreeing. She hoped Patchaya wouldn’t ask him any hard questions.

  “Of course. But first”—Nita met Patchaya’s eyes—“I have a favor to ask.”

  Patchaya’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “A favor?”

  “After his—your—mother died, Kovit was picked up by a criminal organization.” Nita was careful with what she said. She needed to tell the truth. Just not all of the truth. “He ran away after refusing to obey them. But they don’t want him spilling their secrets, so they found evidence he’s a zannie, and they sent it to INHUP.”

  Patchaya’s expression flickered, first swelling with pride, her eyes watery, and then slowly sinking into fear and panic as the rest of the information set in. Nita had been careful to paint Kovit as sympathetically as possible while still keeping enough to the truth so that if Patchaya investigated, the information Nita gave would match up. Based on Patchaya’s expressions, she’d played it properly.

  “He’s been outed to INHUP?” Patchaya whispered.

  “Yes. We have one week before there’s an international manhunt for him.”

  Her breath caught. “One week? That’s so fast. That’s the mandatory minimum time INHUP has to take to verify the information is accurate, but it almost always takes much longer. The evidence must be overwhelming.”

  That was not what Nita wanted to hear.