**
Something was bothering Hugo. He hadn’t had the exploding vision in several weeks. Had they done something that would prevent it from happening inadvertently? Was Dr. McFadden going to do something to Mr. Gideon that would keep him from deteriorating further, and that stopped the explosion? Well, there was one way to find out. Hugo called Madeline. He hadn’t really talked to her after she went home, so he hoped she wouldn’t mind. No one picked up the phone.
It was fine. Madeline ran a business, and it was still technically business hours for her. There was absolutely nothing wrong at all, but he was dialing Maggie’s number anyway, “Maggie, yeah, I’m sorry to bother you, can you find Madeline for me?”
“Sure, one moment,” there was a brief pause and then an audible intake of breath, “Oh god. Oh god she’s dead. She’s dead. She’s in pieces! Oh god.”
Hugo stopped moving, so CJ, who had been trailing behind, ran into him. The phone slipped from his hand as all the warmth drained out of his body. CJ caught it deftly and placed it back in his hand. He just stared at the wall. Madeline was dead. After everything he’d tried, she was right, he couldn’t change her future, just delay it. He was going to kill whoever had done this to her.
“Where is she, Maggie?” His voice sounded distant, wooden.
“Oh god, oh god,” she was sobbing.
“Where is she?”
Maggie sniffled several times, her voice hiccupping when she finally spoke, “A-a forest. Mountain region. Mostly…mostly…” The woman started crying again, “Oh god, oh Madeline! Why…why would anyone-”
“Maggie, I need you to focus,” Hugo interrupted, his voice soothing despite the fact that he wanted to tear the building down, “Where is it? What kind of trees are there?”
The clairvoyant took several more hiccupping gasps to control the tears again before answering, “Coniferous trees. Near Los Angeles.”
Hugo knew exactly where it was, Angeles National Forest. He’d gone hiking there once with his brother when he was still going to the AA meetings. He could see it clearly, feel the air there. He wanted to be there. A gust of wind blew down the hallway, and then he was staring at the forest, the air exactly as he remembered it. He stepped through the portal he had somehow created. There were plastic bags hanging from the trees, each one bloody, with small flashes of pale skin, as they twisted in a slight breeze. He was going to murder whoever did this to her. Hugo reached up to one of the bags, barely able to brush it with the tips of his fingers. It spun away from him as he did so, but that’s not what his attention was focused on.
Edvard, the duplicator, held an axe balanced in his hands, his expression serious and a little nervous. Madeline was tied to her bed, screaming around a gag in her mouth.
“Sorry woman, but I’m getting paid a lot of money to do this.” With that he drew in a deep breath and swung the axe downwards, hacking through her ankle. Blood soaked the bed and the woman thrashed the free stump, tears in her eyes. Edvard brought the axe down on her other foot. Madeline died of shock before he’d made it to her knees. He had to wipe the axe several times on a sheet as he kept losing his grip in all the blood.
Hugo blinked a few times and then brought the phone back up to his ear, “Where is Edvard?” There was no inflection in his voice, he’d never heard that before. It was a very calming sound.
“Why?” The question came out watery.
“He killed Madeline.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” His voice was flat.
“One moment.” There were sounds around him as he paused, waiting for Madeline, but he didn’t care what they were, so he didn’t focus on them. Madeline came back with five locations across the globe.
This had to be done carefully, simultaneously, or else the man would duplicate and they would lose him. Hugo called Christian, “I need your help.”
Something in his voice caused Christian to hesitate before responding, “What do you need?”
“I have four locations of that duplicator that was with Gregori. All of them need to be killed simultaneously. If I get you there, can you handle that?”
There was a pause of confusion as Christian tried to process how Hugo could move his team, and then he decided to just settle on asking the question, “And how are you going to get us there?”
“I can portal now,” Hugo said, a measure of impatience in his voice, “Can you help me?”
Christian’s response was quick and neutral, “Why are we doing this?”
“He murdered Madeline”
If it weren’t for the readiness of the response, Christian’s tone could easily be mistaken for indifference, “Give me five minutes.”
He waited the five minutes, staring up at the trees with their body parts swinging gently. His left arm felt heavy, but it didn’t matter why because Christian called him back, saying that they were ready. Hugo opened a portal to the security center and stepped through. Christian, Sol, John, and one other member of his team were waiting. Hugo opened a portal to each location, and without question, they walked through.
Hugo stepped to the fifth location in a hotel in Tokyo. Edvard was asleep in bed. Hugo waited. Suddenly the man surged into a sitting position, eyes wild. His other bodies were dead. This was his only escape route. Edvard’s eyes fell on Hugo and his mouth dropped open.
“You killed Madeline,” Hugo explained, and then he vacuumed the room; he didn’t want to risk Edvard duplicating himself. There was a thud beside him. Hugo looked down at CJ’s body. She was with him this entire time?
Edvard must’ve had a gun somewhere. Hugo pushed the man’s limp body to the side, looking under the pillow. There it was. He removed the weapon, checking the safety. It was a good thing his brother had taught him how to use a gun, even though he never thought he’d use the knowledge for anything. He placed the barrel against Edvard’s temple and pulled the trigger. Gore splattered his hand as the skull fractured, it was warm and oozing, like getting a bloody nose. Hugo pulled the trigger again. It was much louder than he’d thought it would be. He should leave soon. Hugo wiped off the handle of the gun with his sweater and set it down on the man’s chest. One more thing. He needed to find out who had hired Edvard. Hugo touched the man’s shoulder, concentrating. He saw Edvard deposit a fair amount of cash at a bank. He watched the man’s mother die a violent death. And then his father. He saw Boris’ father, who was now dead, introduce Edvard to his son. But Hugo did not see what he wanted to see; who had hired him to kill Madeline. His head was pounding and his eyes watered, but he still saw nothing else. He would have to find another way.
Now he needed to do something about CJ. Hugo opened another portal, he was getting very good at it, to the medical wing of Gideon Enterprises. He hadn’t held the vacuum for long, so she was going to be fine, but it was really best to leave her there. He dragged her up onto a bed in an empty room and then walked down the hallway.
Hugo took a few more steps that led him back to the forest. He carefully, gently, took down the bloody fragments of Madeline. He saw things while he worked. Her right arm showed a young girl on a swing set; an older boy, with the same dark hair, pushing her higher and higher. She was laughing under the gray sky. She was older, crying and screaming at a man, a blonde woman using him as a shield. She was pouring herself a scotch, the coins on her shawl clinking as her shaking hand splashed the liquid on the table; her eyes were dark and wide. He paused after he set her head on the ground to puke.
Hugo wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and then opened another portal back to Gideon Enterprises. He wasn’t exactly sure where he should put her, but one of the rooms in the medical wing seemed the most logical choice. He flagged down a nurse. The man jumped as he turned to look at Hugo, taking a small step back. Was the nurse afraid of him? For a brief moment Hugo wondered how much the people in the company knew about his activities. No one ever really talked to him anymore.
“Madeline is in there,” he pointed down the h
allway.
The nurse furrowed his brow, having absolutely no idea who Madeline was, “Is she hurt? What happened to her?”
“She’s dead. She used to work here. Tell Mr. Hansen, he’ll know what to do. I have to go now.” Before the nurse could come up with a response, Hugo turned around and walked back down the hallway.
Madeline was dead…he felt sick, stumbled over nothing. He tried to use the wall to support himself. He wanted to be at home so badly that his next step took him into his kitchen. Automatically he reached into the freezer, past the freezer burned dinners, to a bottle of vodka, which he dropped onto the counter with more force than he’d intended. He pulled off his bloody sweater, forgetting it the moment it left his fingers, and reached for a glass.
Edvard had unnecessarily carved her into pieces. He deserved a far worse death than the one he'd gotten. He hoped the man had been terrified, feeling each and every escape route he had dying. He hoped it had hurt. A lot. He wished he hadn’t been so hasty, Edvard should have suffered more.
Hugo looked down at his empty glass. He was on his kitchen floor, wedged in the corner where the counter wrapped around the edge of his apartment. The bottle was on the floor next to him, the level of liquid much lower than it had been coming out of the fridge. The room was tilting and sliding and it felt like he was moving even though he had no urge to ever move again.
It wasn’t fair! She’d had nothing but good intentions. She’d done nothing wrong, where everything he’d done had gone unpunished. He screamed and the glass crashed into the island at the center of the kitchenette, shattering in a sharp shower. It wasn’t fair! It wasn’t fucking fair! He was crying and hiccupping and he couldn’t stop. Hugo curled up, drawing his knees to his chest to bury his face against the fabric. It wasn’t fair.
The Sound of Wind Page 78