If anyone has any brilliant ideas for escaping, I said, I’m all ears. I frowned. Or brain, since I’m not actually listening to you.
If you were all brains, you wouldn’t have let yourself get caught, Eve Kappler said with a malevolence all her own. I rolled my eyes before I caught myself and the sound of her little box getting slammed shut followed. I thought I could hear her screaming in protest somewhere in the distance, but that faded quickly.
You’re at their mercy now, Roberto Bastian chimed in. Gonna have to wait to see how they want to play it.
They haven’t come in to question you and it’s been hours, Zack said, and I could sense his thoughts swirling around, mixed with my own. That’s ... unusual.
What are the odds I walk away from this through legal means? I asked the question.
I heard a cackling from Bjorn and slammed the door on him as well. You’d think one of them would learn from the others, but apparently I got stuck with some real dumbasses. Which was unsurprising, given that my luck always seemed to run in a southerly direction.
Not good, Zack answered me, and I could feel him cringe. Agent Li ... I sensed his hesitation at the use of Li’s name, ... is a pretty serious guy, and he read the charges to you right at the outset. There was a pause. He’s definitely not bluffing. He’s terrible at bluffing.
“Wait,” I said aloud then shut myself up after a quick, darting look around the empty holding room, as though I could see anyone looking at me. Stupid. You know this Agent Li?
Zack’s hesitation was short-lived, but it spoke volumes. He was my roommate at the University of Minnesota in my junior and senior years. He doesn’t mess around. Smart, capable, and straightforward. Like I said, he doesn’t bluff. If you haven’t already been charged with the crimes he listed, then they’ll be filed shortly. I’m just surprised he hasn’t come in to question you yet, especially given that he seemed to know that you’re a succubus and that you murdered five people.
Including you, I said. He accused me of murdering you.
There was a quiet in my head, the three who were left uncaged not wanting to say anything. Finally Bastian broke the awkward tension. Well, technically, you did—
I slammed the door to his box, and he took it like a man, no bellyaching. I could almost see Gavrikov and Zack staring at me from the mirrored surface of the one-way window that I was facing. Their ghostly forms were standing nervously behind me. So, how do I get out of this?
Zack’s face got a strained look. Just wait. Play for time. Where you are right now looks pretty damned untenable, especially with those cuffs on. I stirred again, putting some pressure on the cuffs, but I couldn’t get any leverage on them at all. Certainly not enough to find out if I could damage the metal. Since you probably can’t beat the system—Li said you wouldn’t be getting a lawyer—that leaves escape, which you can’t really do at present. Which means you have to wait until they give you an opening. Be ready for it.
I felt my eyelid twitch from the tension. Only the littlest part of me wanted to cry, but it was still a powerful call. I felt desperate at the thought of losing my freedom, having it taken away from me by these men. The fact that my entire subsection of the human species was being wiped out at this very moment and I was the only one organizing a resistance made it all the worse. I took a breath that was far more ragged than I would have liked and tried to stabilize my breathing, slowing it down, calming myself. It was working for now. I damned sure wasn’t going to cry here, though this was potentially scarier to me for some reason than the idea of being in a fight that could kill me. If I died, it was all over. But murder was a life sentence, and at eighteen years old and with a metahuman life span, that was potentially a very, very long time to be imprisoned.
I wanted to punch the walls, to break the concrete, to shatter the glass in frustration, but I held back. Reckless anger had gotten me here, after all. I thought about the people I had murdered, whom I’d been accused of killing. Really, Li didn’t know the half of it. Parks, Clary, Eve, Bastian and Zack were just the tip of the iceberg for me lately. Thankfully he didn’t know about my recent activities in London or they would have probably added another dozen to the charges.
I blinked. I forgot about those guys over in England. Breandan, Karthik, Kat, Janus and ... Reed. And Scott! I felt a surge of panic, wondering if he was still waiting outside the airport for me. I questioned my internal timekeeper again, wondering if I had really been sitting in this chair for two hours. My ass answered me with extreme discomfort in both cheeks as I shifted my weight around. There was no more comfortable position, unfortunately, just this one. And this one sucked after two hours.
They’ll be all right, Zack said. They’re a resourceful bunch.
I felt my expression waver, emotion almost breaking through the facade. They need me. There’s no way they can fight Weissman and Century without me.
I could almost see Zack’s wan smile in the one-way mirror. Maybe they won’t have to. Or maybe they’ll be able to do it. Reed could rise to the occasion and take over.
I raised my hands and rubbed my face. “No,” I whispered. There’s something about me that make me important. That makes me a threat to Weissman, that makes me important to Sovereign. They need me for ... I started to shrug but stopped myself and feigned a stretch, ... something.
But you don’t know what, Zack said calmly.
And I won’t find out sitting on my ass in this cell, either. I shifted in my seat again. There was no comfort to be had there.
But you can’t get out right now, Zack said, trying to be reassuring.
I felt my internal temperature rise. People are dying. Metas are dying, right now. They’re being wiped out in South America, and probably North America soon. We don’t have time to be sitting here. I don’t have time to waste, to throw away just staring at ghostly faces in the mirror.
His faint smile vanished. Well, there’s nothing you can do—
I could rip apart this chair, I said, letting the anger build in my mind, snag it behind my back and heave it through the damned window, following behind it by a second and pounding anybody in the next room to mutton. I visualized it, jumping through the air and slamming into someone with my shoulder, rolling to my back and using my meta strength to launch back to my feet while striking someone with a vaulting kick as I did so. Then turning with both hands balled tight into fists, smashing them into someone’s gut, sending them flying into the concrete wall where their skull smashed into paste—
You ready to kill cops? Zack asked me, snapping me back to reality, to the cell, to my ass still sitting sore on the chair. You ready to murder men just doing their jobs—
Them doing their jobs is keeping me from doing mine, I raged at him and saw him start to fade. And the stakes are a hell of a lot higher for the world if I don’t get out than they are for them if I stay here. There was a dull roar of blood rushing in my ears and I knew my expression was far from calm, now.
But you can—
Forget it, I said and slammed the door on Zack, locking him away. I’m not in the mood to argue with you. I took another breath, steeling myself to carry out my plan of attack, when something Janus had said before he’d been wounded came back to me.
... a monster wouldn’t care ...
I slowly relaxed my muscles, resting my backside on the chair, certain my expression was still surly. I heard the clink of the handcuff chains as I released tension I didn’t even know I’d put into them, letting myself go slack and going back to controlling my breathing. Breathe in, breathe out. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Just like Mom taught me. I looked inward and saw Aleksandr Gavrikov still there, the only one I hadn’t locked away in the recesses of my mind. He was quiet, dead quiet. Well? I asked him. You got anything to say?
He regarded me carefully in the mirror and shrugged, his faint outline showing me a face I hadn’t seen in reality in something close to a year, since the day I’d absorbed his soul with my own hands, taking it into
my body, my mind. There is not much to say.
I stared back at him and tried to release the tension in my jaw, which was set tight. True enough. Not about this, anyway. It’s time to wait, I guess. I took another breath in through the nose and out through the mouth. Want to talk about something else?
He nodded then looked around the room. Maybe we could talk about Klementina?
I slammed the door on him, prompting a howl that faded quickly. It took me a few moments to get my annoyance under control after that, some more breathing exercises. In that time, I realized that I was at least fortunate in one minor way. If I’d had Gavrikov’s sister’s flat, skinny ass, I reflected as I shifted in my chair for the thousandth time, my backside would be even more sore than it already was.
I stared at my reflection in the mirror and wondered how long I would have to wait. The mirror seemed so big and I so small now, with the others gone from it. Still, I sat there, watching my empty expression, my dull, disinterested eyes, staring at the girl sitting in the middle of the holding cell, all alone.
Chapter 3
The sound of the lock shifting open caught my attention about an hour and a half later. My eyes diverted to it from my reflection, which I had been wordlessly focused on for the intervening time. The room’s air was warm and stuffy enough that I was beginning to notice how ripe I was from the flight; how toxic my breath had gotten from not having a chance to brush my teeth in twelve hours at least. I was tempted to blow a big breath right in Li’s face if it was him coming in.
It wasn’t. Another man stood in the door, a taller one, powerfully built, African-American with greying hair at the temples and just a little scattered throughout the rest of his short-cropped cut. He wore a suit, which, unlike Li’s, wasn’t cheap, and his tie was a little crooked. The door shut behind him and he waved at me where I sat on the chair, hands cuffed in my lap. “Don’t get up,” he said with a hint of a southern accent. I stared back at him and started to say something but he cut me off. “Or uppity, for that matter, at least not until I’ve had a chance to introduce myself.”
I gave him the cool glare, trying to pretend I was uninterested. Facing five murder raps and the threat of no trial, I was actually very interested in what he had to say, which was counterintuitive. After all, Agent Li had essentially painted a hopeless picture for me. Not necessarily the smartest move, putting someone like me into desperation mode. My questions got the better of me, though, even as I started to formulate a plan that involved using my guest as a human shield to help facilitate my escape. “Go on,” I said without emotion.
“I’m Robb Foreman,” he said, taking a step toward my chair. If he was concerned about me being a threat, he hid it well. “Does my name sound familiar to you?”
I shrugged. “Are you the junior senator from Tennessee?” I didn’t follow politics closely, but I knew the names of some of the notables, and he was definitely one of them. His name kept getting mentioned as a contender for the next presidential election.
“The very one,” Foreman said, nodding his head. “I’ve come a long way to speak to you, Ms. Nealon.”
“Question,” I said, stopping him before he could get going. “What’s to stop me from taking you hostage and using you as a human shield to walk out the front door?”
He grinned with a certain warmth. “You could always try it and find out, though I don’t think you’ll find the consequences agreeable or to your liking.” I didn’t love the sound of that, but I didn’t say anything to it. After a moment, he went on. “Like I said, I’ve come a long way to see you.”
“You could have ‘seen’ me from the other side of the glass,” I said, nodding my head at the one-way mirror. “According to your Agent Li, this will be a common view of me pretty soon. He seemed to indicate I was heading toward—what do they call it nowadays? Oh, right—indefinite detention.”
Foreman gave me a slow nod, his lips pursed. “That is a possibility. Murdering Parks, Clary, Kappler and Bastian?” He let a low whistle. “Cold-blooded. Premeditated. You can’t even argue crime of passion on those because you planned it all out.”
“Maybe I could argue self-defense,” I said, keeping myself from showing emotion.
He gave me a slight shake of the head. “Never hold up in court, not with the evidence of the poison still in Parks’s system or the elaborate means you used in that construction site to take out Clary.” His face twisted, and I could see the discomfort exuding off him. “These are not the acts of a person who could argue self-defense.”
“You didn’t say Zack’s name.” I said it quietly, so quietly it was almost inaudible.
“No, I didn’t,” Foreman said, not taking his eyes off me. Mine came up and caught his, though, and I saw him smile in acknowledgment. No one could have heard me to be able to respond to it. No one human, anyway. “Yeah, I’m a meta,” Foreman said, still smiling, but it was a tight one. “My wife is meta. My daughters are metas.”
I stared back at him and something dawned on me. “That’s why you’re not scared to be in here alone with me.”
He shrugged. “You’re strong, but you’re handcuffed, and you’ve got all your flesh except for your head covered. Under those conditions, I feel pretty comfortable that I could win a fight with you.”
I held my hands up and clinked them as I pulled them to maximum extension. “What about without the cuffs?”
Foreman’s eyebrow rose slowly. “I wouldn’t care to chance it.” He waved me off. “I’m not here to talk to you about a brawl for it all.”
“Then what are you here to talk to me about?” I looked away again. “Here to give me the rundown of my crimes, like the Ghost of Christmas Past? Because I know what I’ve done, since I was there—”
His eyes danced and he cut me off. “I’m not here to talk about your past. I’m here to talk about your future.”
I let my tongue roam over my back teeth as I bided my time, trying to wait for him to go on. He didn’t, and my patience ran out, quickly. “According to Li, my future is the inside of a cell. And not five minutes ago, you made mention of that fact as well—”
“It’s one possible future,” Foreman agreed and took a step to his left, leaning against the edge of the one-way mirror. “It’s hardly set in stone, though. There are ... other possibilities.” His hands came to rest in the pockets of his jacket.
“Oh?” I kept my eyes on him then let them flicker to the mirrored glass, wondering if Li was behind them. “And what are those? The other possibilities?”
One of his hands came out of his pocket, something clenched within his fingers. He tossed it lightly, and it skittered across the table to come to rest in front of me. I didn’t take my eyes off of him to look, though, I kept right on him, watching him watch me. He smiled, just a little at the corner of his mouth, a faint tug of the muscles, and he nodded his head at what he’d tossed at me.
My curiosity got the better of me and I broke away from his gaze to look. There was an open leather case resting on the table, a simple bifold that resembled a wallet. There was identification inside, something terribly familiar, something I’d used before. My picture rested inside, along with the letters FBI emblazoned across it. I sighed, and looked back up. “If you’re going to charge me with impersonating an FBI agent, you’re kind of wasting your time, aren’t you? I mean, five murders—or four, or whatever—I think they’ll probably keep me in jail for a long enough time, don’t you? Assuming you even used the court system.” I muttered the last bit.
“Maybe, maybe not, given your longevity.” He ignored my last comment. “But you don’t think I really came all the way here from Washington to discuss the fact that you have a fake FBI ID, do you? I mean, people commit those kinds of crimes all the time, they don’t get a senator coming to them to talk while they’re in stir.”
“So what do you want?” I asked again, and all the fatigue of my trip, the tension from having been arrested and put into custody when I’d felt above the law, all of it ca
me rushing down on me and I snapped at him. “What do you want from me in order to keep my future from being the one where I spend the rest of my life—which may end up damned short depending on how current events turn out—in a jail cell?”
“Look at the ID again,” Foreman said gently.
I rolled my eyes. At a U.S. Senator. “I’ve seen it before. I’ve been carrying it for almost a year now—”
He cleared his throat. “No, you haven’t.” I glanced down. “You’ve been carrying one that says ‘Sienna Clarke’ on it. This one says—”
“Sienna Nealon,” I breathed, reading my name off.
I looked up at Foreman, and he was smiling warily at me. “We seem to have something of a crisis on our hands here,” Foreman said, and his smile disappeared. “Something about the extinction of all metakind? Well ... the U.S. government just lost its unofficial metahuman policing apparatus a couple weeks ago ...”
I blinked in surprise. “The Directorate?”
Foreman nodded, put a hand against the wall, and proceeded to lean heavily on it. “So ... how’d you like to avoid prison time by serving your country and helping us out of this mess?”
Chapter 4
I stared at him, not quite sure what to say. He stared back then spoke. “What are you thinking right now?”
“That old saying, ‘Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me,’ comes to mind.”
“Have we fooled you before?” Foreman asked, folding his arms in front of him as he leaned next to the window.
“Not you, specifically,” I said, “but one of your employees, apparently, since you just admitted the Directorate was your metahuman policing unit.”
Legacy: The Girl in the Box #8 Page 2