“… and again, I think the strongest part of Director Phillips’s statement,” I looked up to find some overpaid jackass talking out his rectum, “is that line where he went directly after Sienna Nealon and her actions—that we can’t suffer this kind of indifference to our rule of law as a society from any metahuman, especially not one as powerful as Ms. Nealon.”
“But don’t you think, Greg,” a condescending anchor came up, some douche with more clothing budget than brains, “that Ms. Nealon is effectively stealing the narrative right now? I mean, she hasn’t been officially sighted in weeks, and the FBI and the DHS are turning every single rock over looking for her. I mean, doesn’t this speak to the inefficiency of our federal agencies?”
“No,” Greg said. I wished I was in studio so I could slap the pensive look off his face. (Violent much, Sienna?) “I think it a lot more likely that some external state actor has given shelter to Ms. Nealon, someone like North Korea, or maybe a non-extradition country that would use her for her talents—someone with a grudge against the Harmon administration or the USA who wants to humiliate us. Her continued status as a fugitive is a thumb in the eye to the Justice Department—”
“Screw you,” I said, and hit the mute button. Of course, Greg’s stupidity kept flowing in text form in the black closed-caption bubble, but I didn’t turn off the TV because removing the knife from my belly was asking for more from me than I was capable of giving. I just couldn’t keep from salting the wounds, from looking at the nasty things people said about me. It wasn’t like I had anything else to do with my life.
I snatched up the phone from the table and scrolled down, deciding to read the article now that I’d gotten myself thoroughly enraged. It was a short read, sounded like it came from a first responder, although the bloggers took some pains trying to disguise it to make it sound like maybe it didn’t. It was all laid out, with the name of the victim, Shannon Christensen, and her baby, who was in the local hospital in critical but stable condition. They didn’t have a picture of Shannon Christensen when she was alive, but they had one of her from the scene that looked like it had been sneakily taken on a camera phone, and it …
Well, it was grisly.
Whoever had killed her hadn’t been merciful about it, which sent my stomach in another loop-de-loop. She was dark haired, wide-hipped, and looked pretty much like I used to, at least from behind. It was hard to say what she might have looked like from in front, because, after I scrolled past the “****WARNING! GRAPHIC CONTENT!****” flag, I was presented with photos of a woman who’d been shot through the back of the head three times with hollow-point bullets, and those had left their mark.
I gagged, and it wasn’t because I hadn’t seen more grisly crime scene photos—and crime scenes—than this one. It was because if Shannon Christensen hadn’t been a few pounds overweight and had the same hair color as I did, she wouldn’t be dead.
I reached down and grabbed my trash can, emptying the contents of my stomach into it. It was like someone had turned my belly inside out, reached down in and just ripped it up and propelled it clear of my mouth with meta force.
Shannon Christensen was dead because she’d committed the crime of looking like me.
That’s not true, Zack whispered in my head.
“Oh, yes it is,” I said, and retched hard into the trash can again. It smelled dank and disgusting, that sour tinge of stomach acid reeking in my nostrils, the contents slushing in the plastic can.
She’s dead because they didn’t care if they had the right door, Bastian said. That’s not on you.
“I’m dangerous,” I said. “They’d be idiots to knock on my door and wait for a response.”
There’s a line, Zack said. Between preparing yourself for danger and storming into someone’s house. They probably didn’t even announce they were FBI.
I had to grudgingly concede that could be the case. She might have thought it was a home invasion.
You’re being stalked by predators, Wolfe said. You didn’t ask for this.
“No,” I said, “I didn’t.” And I hadn’t. I hadn’t asked for Gavrikov to come to the fore and blow up all my enemies in the second before they murdered me.
But I wasn’t sorry he’d done it either, in spite of the collateral damage to my life and already-tarnished reputation that had ensued.
This is not how it is supposed to be in this country, Gavrikov said, slipping into the conversation a little more cautiously than he might have before he’d caused umpteen deaths and millions in property damage about a month earlier. He wasn’t sorry he’d saved my life either, but he was treading lightly because I’d let him have it a few times since without a lot of reason. I didn’t entirely blame him for my predicament, but since I had no one else to unleash on, the voices in my head tended to get the brunt of my ire. Them and the stupid news. There is procedure and this is not it.
“Stop channeling Reed,” I snapped, not even because I was angry at him, but because the thought of him arguing along the line that my brother would have taken had he been here made me raw. It stung that he’d betrayed me. Reed, of all people.
None of these betrayals are natural, Eve Kappler said darkly. Your friends, as much as I loathed them, were not the kind to throw you to the wolves so easily.
“I don’t think it’s that unnatural for them to see me blow up a part of Eden Prairie and think that maybe I’ve lost my ever-loving mind?” I said. “I mean, I did send them all away ostensibly for the purpose of drawing out and killing the people who were trying to kill me. It’s not out of the question that they could have seen that and thought, ‘Oh, hell, she’s lost it.’”
Without the benefit of the doubt? Zack had pursued the skeptical tack on this as well, but I didn’t want to hear it. It was easy for me to believe that everyone would just wash their hands of me and walk away given sufficient provocation.
It had happened before.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said and put down the trash can, the nausea having passed. I picked up the phone again, staring at the bright screen and the photos of the woman who’d been murdered. She didn’t even really look that much like me, I didn’t think, except maybe from behind. But someone—Scott, I was pretty positive—had tagged her with three rounds in the back, then another three in the back of the head to make sure she didn’t get up. That was the whole ball game for Shannon Christensen, and now her baby was going to grow up without a mother—if the child even survived being shot.
God, what a cockup.
Not your fault, Zack said.
“It’s at least a little—”
Were you there? Wolfe asked, roused to anger again. He’d been getting madder and madder since we’d gone into exile. Of course, his solution to the current crisis was murderousness visited upon all who defiled my name. Did you pull the trigger yourself? See the rivulets of gore spray from the girl’s face? I cringed; Wolfe was good with violent imagery. He should have been, though, because he’d certainly painted with that brush enough. He was the Bob Ross of mass murder, a different picture every day.
“The responsibility has to rest somewhere,” I said. “Maybe if I’d—”
Turned yourself in? Bjorn asked. Subjected yourself to imprisonment for fighting for your own life?
Yes, Gavrikov said, how dare you have the gall to defend yourself against attack? Against being murdered?
You should have just lain there, defenseless, Eve mocked, and let them kill you. Let your brains be spread across the pavement. Then this girl would still be alive. All you would have had to do was trade your unjust death for hers.
But it’d still be unjust, Zack said, taking up the point nicely. They were an annoying choir at this point, working in tandem.
“Is it—” I started to say.
Yes, it’s unjust, Wolfe said, rushing in again. When they leave it to murderers and criminals to execute you outside this precious system of justice you seem to venerate—yes, it’s unjust. And if you’d leave the maudlin, childi
sh self-pity behind, you’d see it, too.
“Wow,” I said, “Strong words from the ethereal asshole gallery.”
True words, though, Bastian said grudgingly. You’ve been sitting around feeling sorry for yourself for a month now. Yeah, the world’s against you. Yeah, it’s worse than it was last time. Yeah, you can’t have two beers on the table in front of yourself in this state at the same time—wait, where was I going with this?
The world spins on around you, in spite of you, Eve said, taking up Bastian’s lost thread. I got the feeling this little team of mine might have rehearsed this while I wasn’t paying attention to them. You heard your former boss, dog-shit-for-brains, empty-air-for-testicles, ire-for-all-emotions—
He speaks of justice, Gavrikov said, but calls for your summary execution as a threat—an enemy of the state. That is the sort of thing I saw in my own country. Here it was supposed to be different.
That’s not justice, Zack said. Not my conception of it, anyway. No trial by jury, no talk of capture, and then they go and slaughter a woman, holding a baby in her arms, probably on an anonymous tip.
‘Wrongdoers must be punished,’ Wolfe said. You heard him. Your old boss said it. Who did the wrong here?
I ground out my answer through gritted teeth. “Not me.”
Did you turn loose the Bastille of the Cube? Eve asked. Did you ask for them to come kill you?
“No.”
Were you the one with the gun in her hand, trying to murder someone? Zack asked. Were you lurking around any of those criminals’ homes without cause, pursuing any of them?
Were you wrong when you arrested any of them? Bastian asked. Were any of those people innocent of the crimes you accused them of, locked them up for?
“Hell, no,” I said. “They were scum, pretty much all of them. They preyed on people who didn’t have a tenth of their strength, bullying them, using force, hurting anyone who tried to stand against them.”
Sounds like Phillips, Bastian said, with all the moral authority he had, which was more than anyone else in my head except Zack. Sounds like your old squad, with what they’re doing now.
‘Wrongdoers … have to be punished,’ Wolfe said again.
“I’m actually not the wrongdoer here, am I?” I whispered it, barely daring to believe it was true. It was hard for me to believe, because I’d done bad things in the past, no doubt. I had a crushing sense of being in the wrong quite often, all the way back to childhood. I wasn’t always repentant about it, but I was keenly aware of the feeling lurking in the back of my mind at all times, guilt so thick you could spread it on a sandwich. It wouldn’t taste very good, probably, but there was certainly enough of it.
No, Zack said. You’re not in the wrong. Not this time.
“I’ve been hiding,” I said, staring down at my phone, “and this—this is the price of that. They just … run me down everywhere. Lie about me.”
They wanted you to lie down and die, Bjorn said. It offends them that you didn’t.
“Well, I’m done with that, now,” I said, looking down at the trash bin by my side, feeling a sense of sick guilt fueled by anger as a fresh resolution took root inside. “You’re right, they’ve been getting away with all this—this press campaign against me, a manhunt for a crime I didn’t commit, and now this … murder. And they’ll get away with it, too.” I wiped my chin on my shirt. “I’m not going to sit here anymore and let them lie about me, about what they’re doing.” I set my jaw. “I’m not going to let my friends think I’m a killer and a nut anymore, without a word spoken in opposition. I’m going to get out there, and I’m going to—I’m going to—well, I’m going to do something.”
Here, here, Bastian said.
Yes, Gavrikov agreed, I don’t think we could have taken another week of this hiding shit.
Wolfe is bored, Wolfe said.
“You won’t be bored for long,” I said. “We’re going to get out there. We’re going to find something to do, something that will make a difference, some … first step to digging out of this gigantic hole I’m in—and we’re going to do it.” I clenched my fist. “And nothing is going to stop me—”
And at exactly that moment, the screen on my TV changed, and the words “BREAKING NEWS” splashed across it, showing me a picture of something terrible going on … something I could actually do something about.
7.
Harmon
I was still waiting for the day when they’d install an escalator into the steps of Air Force One, but had a feeling I’d be waiting a long time. I’d had a friend who was a mechanical engineering genius, and he’d promised to take a look at making that happen, but unfortunately he’d gotten distracted with other, more important projects, and then died before completing any of my requests.
A shame, indeed, but such is life.
“Good morning, Mr. President,” said the Air Force officer who flew my plane. I had no idea what his rank was, nor did I care, really. The pilots were a slate of constantly changing faces, and I paid as little attention to them as I did the furniture or the Secret Service agents. It didn’t pay to pull my brainpower away from more important things, like how I was going to snap McSorley, McCluskey, and Shane into line for the education bill vote. Honestly, this was what a party whip was for, yet somehow I had gotten saddled with it. I gave the Air Force officer a nod, dismissing him, and headed to my cabin. The air in the plane was slightly stale, as though they hadn’t turned on the air conditioning yet. “Wheels up in ten minutes, sir!” the Air Force officer called back to me as I walked away.
“Mr. President!” someone called. I looked up to see Jana; she caught me just as I was about to enter my cabin and shut the door. I needed recharge time before I did what I had to do this afternoon, and the breaks were never as long as I needed. The flight from Chicago to DC would be quick, with no lines before takeoff, no waiting in a queue. “Director Phillips is on the line for you—”
“Oh, for God’s sakes—” The press wasn’t around, so I didn’t bother to control the roll of my eyes. “Fine. I’ll take it in my cabin.” I ducked inside before anyone else could harangue me and picked up the phone off its base, then flipped the button that was blinking. “Yes?”
“Mr. President,” Andrew Phillips’s dull voice sounded slightly more urgent than it usually did. Phillips was a big man, physically imposing in a way I had never been. He didn’t intimidate me, but I’d seen him tower over underlings, his bulk straining. Phillips had gained all his middle-aged weight around the belly, and he’d been gaining steadily since I’d first made his acquaintance a few years earlier. It was predictable; working for me didn’t tend to produce abundant amounts of time off for visits to the gym. “There’s been an incident.”
His alarm was obvious. “Make it quick,” I said, trying not to betray my lack of patience. I’d spent the morning with children, after all, and it tired me mentally to be around them.
“Two things, actually,” Phillips said, still dull as plain chalk. “Scott Byerly and his team executed a raid in Cheyenne, Wyoming, this morning based on a credible tip—”
“The elusive Ms. Nealon, then?” I sighed. She’d been a pain in my ass for entirely too long, having outlived her usefulness the day after I was re-elected.
“It wasn’t her,” Phillips said. “The woman matched her description, but unfortunately—”
“You killed the wrong person,” I said, closing my eyes. My anger flared, but I kept it on a tight leash. “Does the press know?”
“They’re not poking,” Phillips said. “But it’s on the web. The usual suspects are sniffing.”
“Someday soon, I’m going to deal with these conspiracy theorists,” I said, opening my eyes as I slid down to rest in my very comfortable leather chair. I had a desk and office on Air Force One, and while it wasn’t my favorite place to work, it wasn’t bad. “Someday very soon, I hope.”
“Well, they’re not wrong in this case, sir,” Phillips said, as though I didn’t already know that.
“They’re right about as often as they’re wrong,” I said, “but that doesn’t matter, does it? I’m not annoyed with them for their lack of accuracy, I’m annoyed with them because they’re like a plague of locusts that has settled on my fields. I’m trying to accomplish things and they’re a drag on my very being.” I took a long breath. “Keep the press away from this. Just deny, and it’ll divide nicely. None of the credible outlets will touch it because it’ll sound like backchannel whining from the opposition to them.”
“Yes, sir,” Phillips said, still tense. “And—”
“The other thing, yes,” I said, pre-empting him. It was so much easier when he was standing in front of me. He took forever on the phone to come to a point. “Get on with it.” In the background, I heard Air Force One’s engines start up, and the lights flickered for just a second. I didn’t lose him, unfortunately.
“There’s a metahuman incident in progress in Las Vegas,” Phillips said. “Casino heist gone very wrong. Local PD is engaging three of them on the Strip right now.”
“The press won’t stay out of that, for certain.” I brought my thumb and forefinger up to the bridge of my nose. I could feel the beginnings of a headache forming. This was what always happened when I overtaxed myself. “What do we have available?”
“The governor of Nevada is calling out the National Guard,” Phillips said. “We’re throwing everything we have at them, but it’s getting ugly, sir. They’re not taking the money and running. It’s turning into a battle. We’ve got three casinos on fire, cars wrecked—”
“Where’s your response team?” I asked, clenching my eyelids closed.
“Still in Wyoming,” Phillips said, with no more emotion than if he’d been informing me he’d come in under budget for the year. No, actually, he would have been considerably more lively had he been delivering that news. “I’m scrambling them, but it’ll be at least two hours before they’re on the ground.”
Unyielding (Out of the Box Book 11) Page 4