Hope was roped to a chair.
No, not just roped, but chained, with layers of duct tape wrapped around her arms and legs for good measure. The chair itself was an industrial steel contraption that had been bolted to the floor. Her face had been beaten to hell and back. Some of the beatings had been recent, too: there was fresh blood oozing from a shallow cut across her forehead.
As Rachel stepped into the space beside Hope, the woman’s eyes moved reflexively towards Rachel’s avatar, then returned to the man standing guard over her with the gun.
The man with the gun caught the gesture, and his body snapped tight. “What?!” he exclaimed, jerking his body sideways to see what she had been looking at.
Hope coughed. The sound twisted Rachel’s stomach; it was dry and raspy, the sound of a woman gone too long without water. But the look she gave the man with the gun held as much venom as if she was well-fed and thoroughly rested.
“Paranoid much, fuckhead?” Hope snarled at him.
He hit her.
Hope rolled with the punch as best she could. It wasn’t much—they had lashed her down so tightly that she could barely move. Her head rocked backwards and smacked against the metal crown of the chair.
The woman spat blood and laughed.
“That’s nine,” she said. “Wanna make it an even dozen? I’ve got time.”
He backed away from her. “Crazy bitch.”
“Kill the cameras,” Hope said to Rachel.
“What?” The thug pulled back, head bobbing around to see who Hope was talking to.
In a single fluid move, Hope stood up and slammed the ball of her foot into his chin. The man’s head whipped backwards before he fell to the ground, solidly unconscious, the chains that had bound Hope to her chair crashing down around him.
“Asshole,” Hope muttered. She knelt and checked his pulse, then turned him to lie on his side, before she began peeling the pieces of duct tape off of her arms and legs.
Rachel gaped at her, amazed. The tape that had bound Hope to the chair was shredded into tiny strips, the shackles on the chains unlocked. “Hope, what the hell?!” she shouted. “How do you keep doing that?”
The other woman shrugged as she walked around the tiny room, stretching and whipping her limbs around to get her circulation going. “Would you believe it’s an old martial arts trick?”
“Really?”
Hope stopped dead and stared at Rachel. “Oh shit, that’s right. You’re out-of-body,” she whispered, then said, almost hesitantly, “Yeah. They can’t keep me tied up. Anything they use to hold me down, I can escape or break.
“Which is why they moved me,” she added, as she gathered up the duct tape and began unpeeling it from itself. Her fingers flew as she began to bind the pieces back together into the shape of a flower. “All right, catch me up on what’s happening before they notice the cameras went dark.”
“They didn’t,” Rachel said. “I backed up the recording so it’s playing on a loop.”
“That doesn’t work,” Hope said. “Sparky tried that. They notice inconsistencies, but it’ll take them a while to get in here. That barricade works both ways.”
“Damn,” Rachel said. She pushed her avatar through the doorway to check the hall. “We’re good,” she said, as she bobbed back into Hope’s cell. “Nobody’s coming.”
“They’ve started checking in on me every fifteen minutes,” Hope said, as a second duct tape flower joined the first. “And they bring Avery to me on the hour. I think they’re reminding me that I shouldn’t try to leave this room.”
“Why do they only post one guard? They’ve got plenty of men.”
“Probably because I can take down three men as easily as one,” Hope said. From anybody else, it would have been bragging; from Hope Blackwell, it was a statement of fact. The weird woman finished another flower, and began to twist them together into a sticky daisy chain. “This way, they only lose one at a time.”
“No,” Rachel said, as she peered back into the hallway again. Still empty. “That’s beyond stupid. Why lose any at all?”
Hope shrugged.
“They have access to sedatives,” Rachel said. “So if they’re now okay with beating you instead of keeping you fresh for the cameras, why aren’t they keeping you drugged?”
“No idea. Hell, why kidnap me at all, while we’re at it? Everybody knows you can’t make my husband bend. Even if they kill me, it’ll just piss Sparky off and he’ll come after them that much harder.”
“Maybe,” Rachel said, but she had her doubts. That photograph from the wedding was too fresh in her mind. “I think it’s more likely they’re testing your limits,”
“Fuuuuuck,” Hope groaned. “Shit. You’re probably right.”
“Yeah. Stop breaking loose,” Rachel told her. “Next time they tie you up, let them think they finally got it right.”
“Aww!” Hope rolled her head backwards and sighed. “Rachel, this place is soooo boring!”
Rachel squashed the urge to slap her. “You sound like a kid,” she said. “A whining child. Avery needs you.”
“Sorry,” Hope squeezed her eyes tight. “I know, I know.” She knelt over the unconscious man and began to attach the daisy chain to his hair, twisting his locks into the sticky clumps of duct tape. She gave the daisies a savage tug; the man’s head followed, and then banged against the floor as she shook them.
“I hate to ask, but are they keeping you up on your medications?”
“No, not so far.” Hope said with a shrug. “I haven’t been here long enough to know for sure, but they haven’t given me anything.”
“Oh boy.”
“Don’t worry about me. I’m good for a couple more days, at least. If this standoff lasts for more than that, I think we’ll have bigger problems.”
Rachel watched the man’s head jiggle beneath its duct tape crown and didn’t reply.
“Listen,” Hope said with a deep sigh, “nobody wants me off of my meds. I’m a fucking menace. Two days of sitting in a chair is gonna be bad enough, but…” She dropped the man’s head and stood. She resumed moving and stretching, trying to burn off what energy she could in the tiny room. “I’ll be fine,” she said quietly.
She rounded on Rachel. “I’ll be fine,” she said again. “And don’t you go running back to Sparky, telling tales of his poor wife going violent, okay?”
“Don’t go violent,” Rachel said, “and we’ve got a deal.”
Hope glared at her. After a moment, her face softened. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
Rachel sighed. Somewhere, miles away, her fingers knitted together. “Would you believe I’m just here to check on you?”
“Nope.” Hope paced across the room to check on the unconscious guard. “Sparky has OACET’s foresters and tax consultants watching me and Avery. Everybody who’s in law enforcement is working to get us out.”
When Rachel didn’t answer, Hope read her face like a book. “You think something’s wrong with him.”
“He should be freaking out,” Rachel admitted. “We’re all freaking out! Everybody in OACET has been quietly panicking since you and Avery got snatched. But your husband… Hope, there’s nothing there.”
“God damn it all,” Hope muttered. “He said he wouldn’t let himself go that far any more.”
“What?”
“Sparky…” Hope paused, her head cocked to the side to listen for footsteps. After a moment, she went back to making her silver flowers. “You remember how you all got turned into zombie-robots for a few years, right?”
Rachel didn’t bother to reply. Hope glanced at her face again, and grimaced.
“Yeah, sorry,” she said. “Of course you…sorry. Anyhow, Sparky—”
Shouting—distant, at first, but moving towards them, followed by the sound of running feet. A Crash! Bang! from the other side of the door, and the scraping sound of furniture being moved away.
Hope scrubbed the last of the sticky residue into the hair of her cap
tor. “Later,” she promised Rachel.
“Hope—”
The door opened with a crash. Four men rushed in, but froze in place when they saw the wild woman in the center of the room. They started to fan out, trying to push Hope into the corner.
There were no guns, but two of them had Tasers.
A brilliant grin lit Hope’s face. “Talk to Josh, Peng,” she said out of the corner of her mouth. “I’m gonna have me some fun.”
THIRTEEN
Jeremy Nicholson breezed into Mulcahy’s office like a conquering hero, his blood-red core neatly contained within a cage of yellow-white excitement.
The man with the core of freshly minted iron followed behind him, blending seamlessly with the four other henchmen in militia camo. Rachel wouldn’t have paid him any mind at all, had not his colors been snapping across the office in professional blues as he weighed personnel, security, tactics…
“Found you,” she whispered to herself as Nicholson’s second-in-command weaseled his way over to a windowless corner with clear line-of-sight to Nicholson. He all but vanished in that corner, looking like nothing more than another silent sentry, and one who didn’t want to be there.
Nicholson was dressed in his best camouflage business suit. An oversized semi-automatic rifle (not a NORINCO, of course, because why would a sovereign citizen who claimed to be trying to cut to the heart of the problems with America’s legal system carry anything other than a gun made in the good old U.S. of A?) dangled like a prop from his shoulder. He flashed his movie star’s smile at the reporters who had been invited to attend the meet-and-greet phase, and walked up to Mulcahy all a-grinnin’, with a wink and a nod for the reporters as he offered his hand to the man whose wife he had stolen.
Mulcahy took it.
The man with the iron core watched the exchange, his attention focused in laser-bright whites, as if waiting to see if Mulcahy would break Nicholson’s hand off at the wrist. No. Instead, Mulcahy escorted Nicholson to a pair of club chairs, and let the kidnapper choose his throne. Nicholson took the chair closest to the lights and cameras, the wide windows with their near-panoramic view of Washington behind him, and made a big deal of passing his rifle to Mulcahy as a peace offering.
Rachel scanned the rifle and found it empty. Unlike Mulcahy’s own service weapon, which was fully loaded and lay like coiled death against the skin of her palms as Mulcahy instructed her to lock it up for the duration of the meeting—
As she moved, Southwestern turquoise and yellow-white surprise flared across the room.
She kept her head down and her face pointed towards the digital locks on Mulcahy’s desk as Iron Core recognized her. As she watched him, an equal dose of her turquoise joined the cerulean and tattoo blues within his conversational colors.
If Nicholson doesn’t give two shits about me, why would this guy rank me up with Mulcahy and Josh? she thought, and began to scan him in earnest. Hidden weapons, of course: as leader of this fiasco, Nicholson’s impractical-in-close-quarters metal phallus had been granted an exception by the FBI. They had searched the other militia members (snerk!) and had gone over them with metal detector wands besides, but plastic knives had come a long way and held a fabulous edge. She went deeper, past cloth and into skin and bone: the contours of Iron Core’s face had the same lines as Wyatt’s, where skin and muscle had been parted and stitched back together to form something new.
“Oh, I am very interested in your tragic backstory, sir,” she said quietly.
Beside her, Josh flared in curious yellows, and she felt the press of his mind against hers.
Rachel opened a link. “That guy,” she said, gesturing towards Iron Core with her thoughts as she showed Josh his conversational colors.
She felt Josh nod. “Got him?” he asked.
“You sure you don’t need my scans for the meeting?”
“No.”
“Then I’ve got him,” she said. She snapped her head up and towards Iron Core, and broke away from the other OACET Agents to stand beside him.
Iron Core did his best to ignore her, so she snuggled up beside him and draped her arm around his waist.
“Hey, cutie!” she said, her fingertips brushing against the handle of the knife he had concealed inside his waistband.
“Get away from me.” He tried to sidle away.
“Don’t be rude,” she said, tugging him towards her. “We use the buddy system here. You’re my buddy! Don’t you want to be my buddy?”
He twisted; she countered. His hand went to where he had left his knife, and found it missing.
“You don’t want to be my buddy?” she asked, as she pressed the resin blade against the back of his camouflage windbreaker. Its tip was aimed at his left kidney; his colors blanched slightly as it pricked him through his jacket. “Lots of reporters here,” she said, waving her free hand at those who had overheard their scuffle and were watching them with the black-eyed stares of sharks. “Lots of FBI, too. Did you want them to pay attention to you? If I were you, I wouldn’t want them to wonder why an Agent’s getting all chummy with me…”
Iron Core crossed his arms and let her curl her arm around his waist.
“You’re such a good buddy,” Rachel said quietly, tugging him towards her. “So good. So polite. So willing to play along, even though you know about me…about what I can do…”
He stayed dumb, but his colors twisted towards uncertain orange and the green of disgust. Good, she thought. Prime the pump until the red pours out.
“Microexpressions,” she said. “The little details of the face, the body…” She grabbed his arm and pulled him close enough to whisper in his ear. “…all laid out for me to see.
“You were hiding, weren’t you? When I came to the factory with Josh? Volunteered to guard Hope so I wouldn’t make you as the brains behind this shitshow?
“And I wonder why you were so surprised to see me today?” she added, running her free hand along his arm. “Did you think I’d be stuck at a gas station on I-95? Got a buddy of your own who knows how to slash tires?”
The orange darkened towards annoyance, but now the sage green of comprehension was beginning to thread itself through the orange.
“There you go, that’s exactly what I needed to see,” she whispered, as she laid her hand over his. “What a good little buddy you are!”
The man with the iron core shuddered in green revulsion.
She felt positively filthy. Avery, she reminded herself. Hope and Avery and a whole bunch of other people, huddled together in the dark.
Across the room, Nicholson told the reporters he was done with them. He was more polite, of course, with broad statements about resolving issues quickly and how he would be happy to set up an interview with each and every one of them.
The reporters left: if they hadn’t been charmed by Nicholson, they were willing to pretend they were in exchange for their exclusive. As the door shut behind them, the militia’s nominal leader turned to the FBI agents.
“Shoo, flies,” Nicholson said to the FBI. “The grownups need to talk now.”
Professional blues took on the dark shine of gunmetal, and the FBI agents looked to Mulcahy.
“We’ll call if we need anything,” he said.
“It might get loud in here,” Rachel said in her sultriest voice, as she pulled Iron Core against her. “Just ignore us.”
There’s the red, she thought, catching the embers of hate within Iron Core’s conversational colors, and began to stroke his hand. Her scans showed the FBI taking position down the hall, close enough to come running but not close enough to overhear.
“Nothing to drink?” Nicholson asked, as he draped his feet on top of Mulcahy’s coffee table. The table was fairly new—at least, its current iteration was new. The round top was made from slabs of reclaimed pine from Germany’s Black Forest; the aluminum legs had spent their last lives as ribs inside a decommissioned Sea Harrier. In Rachel’s opinion, it was the nicest gift Mulcahy had ever received from a Bri
tish Prime Minister.
“No,” Mulcahy said.
“You’re a poor host, Mulcahy. I put on the nicest dinner for Glassman—”
“I…” Mulcahy said, as he leaned forward and put both of his plate-sized hands flat on the coffee table. He pressed down; the coffee table began to groan under his weight. “…am not Agent Glassman.”
He stood and hurled the coffee table across the room with one hand. His aim was perfect; the table hit the door—that one spot in the office that was empty of shelves, tchotchkes, or people—and clattered, spinning, to the floor.
Rachel didn’t miss how the militia members turned to Iron Core for permission to react, or how Iron Core held up two fingers, ever so slightly.
She pulled him close to her again and stage-whispered, “Your pets are so well trained!”
Angry reds and oranges flared like fire across the room, and she leaned against Iron Core and tittered like a drunken cheerleader.
“Back off, girls!” she said, as she drew her hand up the center of Iron Core’s chest. “He’s mine!”
The FBI agents in the hall kicked open the door in time to see Iron Core grab her by her hair and drive her face straight at the mahogany abomination of a desk. Their guns were drawn; they were shouting commands.
Rachel screamed as she let her weight come down on her hands with a Wham! and pretended to collapse. She rolled to the side and beneath the desk, the world’s slipperiest sack of potatoes.
Iron Core did not, despite her dearest wishes, puddle on the floor beside her in a disgusting rain of blood and bone and tacky camouflage pajamas. Through the desk, she saw him with his hands up, calling for peace, while the surface colors of the FBI whipped around the room, plucking colors off of different surfaces and fitting them together like a puzzle—
Damn, she thought, as the iron gray slid into place beside an electrified (but non-threatening) reddish-blue. So close.
Well, there was more than one way to deprive Nicholson of his second-in-command. She reached out to an anonymous burner phone two floors below.
Brute Force Page 20