Legacy: The Girl in the Box #8

by Crane, Robert J.

  “I love how the phrase ‘conjecture’ is really just replacing the word ‘guessing’ with something more sophisticated-sounding,” Breandan added, watching the whole conference unfold with his hand cautiously over his mouth.

  Breandan, he was here for the comic relief. And oh, how desperately we needed it.

  “We’ve got action on the border crossings near Seattle,” Li said, and the slide on his presentation changed. “Unfortunately we didn’t connect them in time, because they were using new passports, but some things developed after that that steered us in that direction.” He clicked his remote again and five passport photos showed up, three women and two men. “If they’d been using the same passports, we might have been able to track them from country to country, at least among the ones who have electronic records. As it is, we flagged them because they were all caught on a security camera in downtown Seattle in a shootout with unidentified operatives.”

  “Of Omega,” I said.

  Li cast me a withering glare. It was a regular thing between him and me, so I ignored it. “We haven’t been able to substantiate that.”

  I pointed at the blurry, black-and-white images on the screen, which showed the very vague and only slightly enhanced faces of the quintet of Century operatives whom he’d just shown us being shot at by a woman and three men. I reached into a thin file sitting on my desk and tossed out three photos on the center of the conference table, one at a time. “I’m telling you, these are the same people.” The woman was a blond, looked to be in her late thirties, severe, with a worn look around her eyes. “Katheryn Hildegarde, an Omega field officer.” I stood, because that was how I did things whenever I was about to butt heads with Li. “Last known posting was Seattle, along with a few of Omega’s field operations people.”

  “You haven’t had any luck chasing down Omega’s remnants?” Foreman said in a way that was just a little shy of accusing me of failing at my job. He wasn’t wrong, though. I’d also spent the last six months chasing Omega’s ghosts with little success.

  “No,” I said. “Their headquarters is essentially fallen, remember? These people aren’t dumb. They know if HQ is gone, it’d be smart if they were in the wind.”

  “They’ve been highly trained,” Karthik put in. “They were in charge of helping expand and run Omega’s illicit businesses here in America with very little oversight. These are seasoned people, experienced thugs, and usually quite savvy. They’re also used to going well under the radar since Omega’s political connections in the States were significantly weaker than back home in Europe.” He looked down at Hildegarde’s picture. “They’re resourceful, mean, tough fighters. We have yet to get a reasonable line on what Hildegarde is planning to do, other than potentially disrupt Century’s plans.”

  “What type is she?” Foreman said, staring down at her picture.

  “Medusa,” I replied, and he looked at her hair questioningly. “No snakes,” I answered before he could ask, “but she does have the ability to control her hair, lengthen it, use it as a solid appendage to beat and flail at an enemy, even entrap them within it.”

  “She doesn’t really look like she’d turn you to stone with a gaze,” Breandan said, looking at the picture on the table. “She’s actually quite fetching, you know, might be she’d turn parts of you to the same consistency as stone—” He stopped, as if he was remembering where he was. “Sorry,” he said as he flushed.

  I ignored it. “Whatever she’s doing, I’d like to talk to Hildegarde. She’s already put a thorn in Century’s eye, and I can’t pretend I don’t like it.” I pointed at Li’s backdrop photo. “Three of Century’s agents were killed in the exchange, along with two of hers.”

  “Type?” Foreman asked, his jaw level.

  “Impossible to say for sure,” Li said, his voice clipped, “but we suspect at least some of Century’s losses were telepaths, coming down to start the reconnoitering.”

  Foreman leaned back. “So this is very good news.”

  “If it’s true,” I said cautiously, “yes. Which is why I’d like to find a way to make contact with Hildegarde. Maybe make her an offer.”

  “You think she’s going to be interested in any offer that you have to make?” Foreman asked.

  “I think she’s killed Century agents, and that puts us on the same side for now,” I replied. I caught my mother’s worried look out of the corner of my eye.

  “You don’t expect some sort of Omega power struggle between the two of you?” Foreman asked, fingers stroking his chin.

  I glanced at Karthik. “Omega is dead. She’s welcome to whatever’s left, absent the people who have chosen to side with us. We’ve visited a few safehouses in the last few months, and everyone has pretty much flown the coop, except for that one Siren-type we ran into down in Chicago.” That hadn’t been pretty. Breandan, Scott, Karthik and Reed had almost been wiped out before I had ended her allure by breaking her jaw. Now she was stuffed in a cell in Arizona and fed three times per day by female guards.

  “You might not want to assume she’s fighting the same fight as you,” Foreman said.

  “I don’t,” I replied. “But she’s going to be forced to by Sovereign, eventually. All of us are. It’d be nice to have some more fighters on our side.”

  “All right,” Foreman said warily. “Next moves?”

  “We need to keep watch on the border,” I said, cutting off Li, who was about to start talking before I halted him. “We need to comb the records of who’s crossing and flag as many people as we can. As soon as we figure out where the next target is, I’ll move a team into position to start doing some hammering back.”

  Foreman gave me one quick nod. “And here on the home front?”

  I looked around the conference room. It was expansive, with glass windows overlooking a grassy campus that was deeply familiar, for obvious reasons. I’d spent most of the time I’d been outside my house here on these grounds. We had three buildings now, the construction companies doing wonders with what we were paying them. We now had a dorm, a headquarters building, and a training center with a gym, and they were working on a parking garage. They were also reinforced against easy demolition such as Omega had managed. “Not much we can do,” I said. “We’ll protect the people we’ve got as best we can, but—”

  “But the minute you’ve got a line on something more interesting than sitting around here, you’ll be off chasing it and leaving everyone unprotected,” Li said, drawing a few shocked looks and a deathly silence.

  I turned to look at him. “Playing defensive given what’s at stake seems like a really good formula for losing everything.”

  Li smiled, but his face was haughty and smug. “Trite fortune cookie wisdom is not a sound strategy for fighting this war.”

  “Given it’s my people at the sharp end of the blade, I think I know what’s at stake here,” I said. “Fortune cookie wisdom or not, it’s true. Standing here and waiting for the entirety of Century’s one hundred metas to descend upon us using their “overwhelming force” strategy is a pretty sure way to die messily.”

  “She’s got a point,” Foreman said, looking over at Li. “I don’t care how good these people are, everything we’ve got on Century says that they’re top of the food chain for meta powers. Sienna could assemble a team of veritable badasses from what we’ve got in the files, but they’re going to be outnumbered.”

  I put my hands over my face and buried them for a minute. This had been a constant topic of discussion over the last few months, hashing and rehashing how we’d fight Century. So far the answer was the same as how I’d go about eating an elephant: One small bite at a time. “We need a line on them. We can’t turn the tables until we know which table they’re sitting at, and right now we’re not even in the same restaurant.”

  “Looks like this Katheryn Hildegarde got a pretty good line on them,” Breandan said. “Maybe you should ask her how she did it?”

  I pulled my hands away from my face and looked up. My mother
caught my gaze and I knew I was wearing the same expression she was.

  Foreman caught the look and I could see the caution plant itself all over his dark features. “I know that look. That’s the look my wife and daughters share when they’re about to tell me something they know I won’t like.”

  “What if we could approach Hildegarde?” I asked. “Now we’ve got two motives—find out if she’s on the same side, and failing that, find out how she got a piece of those Century operatives.”

  “She probably just waited for them,” Karthik said, the voice of reason. “They’re coming for all of us metas, sooner or later. She probably laid a trap where they wouldn’t suspect and blindsided them.”

  “So how do we find the telepaths?” I asked. “How do we ambush people who can read minds?”

  “Send someone who doesn’t have a mind to read,” Scott suggested, waving a hand at Breandan.

  “Hey!”

  I thought about it for a moment. “Is there anyone who can block a telepath’s abilities?”

  “Sure,” Foreman said cautiously. “An empath can do it. We can even use our powers to push a little gap in their abilities. Drives telepaths nuts because unless they’re really paying attention, they don’t see us coming. The converse is we can’t use our powers of persuasion on them, either.”

  I felt a little surge of glee. “But can you tell when there’s a telepath about?”

  He shook his head. “Only by noticing there’s no empathic presence to correspond with the person I’m seeing with my eyes. Obviously,” he said, holding up a hand, “it only works in plain distance. If I can’t see them ...” He let his voice trail off. “Same goes for me with them, I’m told.”

  “Well, that is some helpful information,” Scott said acidly. “It might have been even more helpful to know this six months ago, since that’s how long we’ve been trying to figure out how to dog these bastards.”

  Foreman shrugged. “There’s a limited application for it, and you’d need to know where the telepaths were going to be. I’ve kept apprised of everything going on, it’s not like I would have held it back from you if something had come up before now wherein that information had to be disclosed.”

  “Playing the wise man card in this group is not the smartest strategy,” Reed said, but he was more calm than malicious. “You might consider being more open.”

  “About everything else, I am,” Foreman said, tight-lipped. “About my own personal life and abilities, forgive me for being somewhat reticent.” He folded his hands in front of him.

  “This is all a distraction,” I said. “The revelation is what’s important, not the circumstances. Now that we know this, I have an idea.” I smiled. “Okay, a couple ideas.”

  There was an uncomfortable silence finally broken by Scott. “Please stop smiling.” He looked uneasy. “It makes me nervous in a meeting when you get that look, because what inevitably follows is something that makes our previous plans look sane by comparison.”

  “Oh, I think you’ll like this one,” I said, but I’m pretty sure my smile got wider. “Because it involves finally scoring a point on Century.”

  Chapter 18

  Orlando’s McCoy International Airport had a massive open courtyard outside the terminal arrival area. A fountain in the center spewed water under a glass-paneled ceiling hundreds of feet above, giving the whole place a certain majesty. Concrete planters a couple feet high were arrayed around the fountain with wooden benches stationed in front of them for seating. There was a hotel above, balconies around the edges of the courtyard and extending a few stories up toward the glass ceiling. The whole thing was bright and totally appropriate, I thought, for the Sunshine State.

  I was getting very accustomed to sitting there, a mocha in hand while we waited outside the security checkpoints, watching the lines peak and subside throughout the day as new arrivals flooded by as their flights came in. Right after the meeting wherein Foreman had let slip what an empath could do, I got us a flight down to Orlando. It was pretty easy because it turns out that our little Agency was doing so well in the markets that we were able to charter a private Gulfstream. The U.S. senator who sat across from me for the whole flight didn’t seem to like it very much, but Scott, Reed, Breandan, Karthik, my mother and I luxuriated in the travel arrangements as we flew down with only a brief stopover in Nashville to pick up a passenger. That was days ago, though, and sitting around the courtyard in Orlando’s airport at odd hours for the last few days had already caused me to forget what it was like living to live in luxury for once.

  Reed was standing next to me, munching on a burrito that he’d gotten from somewhere down the concourse. Ahead of us was the security checkpoint blocking entry to the courtyard. His eyes were fixed, watching a stream of people come out of the customs line. Breandan was completely bored, just zoned out with his head back, resting against the bench he was lounging on. “How much longer?” he asked, his Irish accent affecting a high whine.

  “Until we get the word they’ve all cleared customs,” I said, annoyed.

  “This is getting repetitive,” Breandan said, splayed out on his seat. I expected more nerves from him, but all he did was occasionally fiddle with the waxed ends of his mustache, like a man with all the time in the world and nothing to fill it with.

  “You forgot the charger for your phone, didn’t you?” Reed asked between bites of the burrito.

  “I was doing so well on Candy Crush, too,” Breandan moaned.

  “This isn’t my idea of the greatest way to spend my time, either,” Foreman said from just down the row. “But this plan is sound.” The fountain was a continuous roar behind us; not loud enough to bother me, but enough to add some white noise to the buzz of conversation already going in the courtyard.

  “The plan was sound days ago, when it was originated, when it was fresh, and when my bum didn’t have four days’ worth of hard benches underneath it and wake-ups at all hours of the night and day to wear it out,” Breandan replied.

  My earpiece buzzed with a burst of static. “Last of the passengers from Flight 1834 from Mexico City are now through customs.”

  “Last of them coming through now,” I said, parroting the missive I’d just overheard.

  “Using the DEA to do spotting for us was pretty smart,” Reed said. “They can watch like they normally would, thinking they’re looking for drug mules.” He gave me an amused glance. “I wonder how pissed they’d be if they knew we were just using them to keep an eye on passengers moving through customs?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, “and I don’t care much, either. Maybe they’ll turn up something for themselves in the bargain, but it’s fairly irrelevant. I just need to know when each flight is finished offloading so we can take a break every now and again.” I looked down at Foreman. “Anything?”

  He was looking at the customs gate with intense concentration. “Maybe.” He seemed to focus, to stare harder at the portal where arrivals were streaming through. “I think ...” He stood and started to walk toward the portal, where a few TSA employees waited around a podium to block anyone’s attempt to enter. “Oh, yeah.” He straightened instantly. “Four of them.” He pulled his cell phone out and pointed it in the general direction of the customs gate as he took a picture that I knew was immediately uploaded to J.J. back at the Agency in Minneapolis for flagging in case they got past us. “They look like businessmen—and a woman. Suits, ties, roller suitcases—”

  “I got ’em,” I said, taking the lead. Reed moved to my left side, just a little off my shoulder. Foreman fell in behind with Breandan just next to him. We tried to avoid looking ridiculously conspicuous, but it was kind of hard. Subconsciously, I knew Foreman’s ability to keep us blocked from the telepaths’ power was limited by distance, and so I hung close by him, not wanting to tip our hand, especially now that we had a line on them.

  It turned out not to matter.

  It was the woman who screwed it up. The men were oblivious, talking, laughing,
enjoying their cover assignment. It was the woman, a strawberry blond with a deeply serious expression, who looked back. Her lips were too wide for her face, her most prominent feature, I noted as she caught my eye. At least until her eyes went wide like she’d just been stabbed in the ass with a knife.

  “We’re made,” Reed said, stating the ridiculously obvious.

  “Made of what?” Breandan asked.

  For my part, I was already running, any thought of casual behavior tossed aside. I vaulted onto the top of the planter that was between me and the group of them just as she said something to the rest of her party, prompting them all to immediately turn to look rather than run, which was what they should have been doing.

  I leapt through the air and descended into their midst after screaming, “HOMELAND SECURITY! You are under arrest!” There was a brief moment of shock that rippled through the courtyard while I came down, and panic broke loose as people scrambled to get away in the moments following. For my part, I angled my landing at the blond who’d fouled up my ambush. I hit her hard enough to knock her out when I came down. I swept the next guy in line, and he cracked his head against the burnt-orange tile floor. The next tried to run, but I picked up the woman’s discarded roller suitcase and flung it into his back, dropping him like an empty bottle of Snapple—of which I’d had more than a few over the course of our stakeout.

  I turned to face the last of them, but as I did, his suit swelled, muscles bulging underneath like a tent billowing in a gust of wind. He looked so diesel after about five seconds that even an MMA champion might think twice before starting a fight with him. His dark, short-cropped hair framed a face highlighted by a cruel expression—sneering lips, squinty eyes, and a definite sense that he thought he was about to come out of our altercation on top.

  “Heya, Hercules,” I said, keeping my distance. “I guess you’re the brawn of this operation.”

  He almost snarled. “I was their escort, yes.”

  “Ooh,” I said, “you sure you don’t mean ‘bodyguard’? Because ‘escort’ kinda makes you sound like you were their hooker.”