Ruthless (Out of the Box Book 3)

by Robert J. Crane

  I froze, almost to the door, and was about to turn around when Rocha’s voice blasted into my ear. “Simmons is getting a call from the brain!” I stopped, just listening, waiting to hear what happened next.

  It was not good.

  “He’s looking right at me,” Reed said, a trill of unease. “He’s not taking his eyes off. I’m made. I need to—”

  The next sound was metal screeching, something horrible happening on the other end of the microphone. I dropped the coffee in the middle of the floor and shattered the window of the coffee shop as I flew out, all other idiots but one forgotten.

  I needed to get to my brother before Eric Simmons could do whatever it was he was planning to do.

  7.

  “Rocha, shut down Simmons’s phone!” I shouted as I flew down Canal St. toward the subway station. That wasn’t likely to do much, but I had to try.

  “Done!”

  I descended into the station on the fly, went over the turnstiles without a thought, listening to the crash and horror over my earpiece. “Reed!” I shouted, ignoring the startled looks of passersby as I blew through.

  I paused above the subway platform, filled from end to end with people, and felt the subtle vibration through my body of so many people in such proximity. It wasn’t just an unease born of people-based claustrophobia. There was something else, too, a sense of their souls, all right there, and all I needed to do was reach out and start taking—

  Not helpful.

  So helpful. So tasty—

  Not helpful, Wolfe. Not.

  I launched toward the southward tunnel, blackness shrouding it. Sounds were issuing forth, crashing, metal grinding—everything I imagined a train wreck to be and more. The sense of dread that filled my stomach as I flew was pervasive, an acid-tasting horror that crept up my gullet and threatened to overwhelm my mouth and nostrils.

  Please let him be okay. That was the thought that filled my head on perpetual loop as I swooped into the darkness.

  There was a faint light, emergency lamps showing a subway train on its side. I could see it in the distance, and a low rumble reached my ears. “Rocha, what have you got?” I called as I flew on, seconds from arriving.

  “All cameras on the train are out,” he said, brusque. He didn’t sound like he was having any fun. “I have nothing on the interior.”

  “Reed?” I asked again, more tentative this time. There was a sound of grunts, of pain, of screams in the background, all bleeding into the microphone.

  I was almost to the train when the front windshield shattered, spitting plastic or plexiglass or actual glass out in a shower. A dark object followed, a bundle that did not move as it fell, rolling across the tracks. There was a faint sound of crackling electricity as it hit the third rail, and it—he? I could hardly tell—filled the tunnel with anguished cries as he jerked wildly on the ground.

  I struck him purely out of reflexive action, felt the electricity pass through me and scourge my nerves with agony. I’d felt worse, but it was no happy picnic day in Central Park. Not that I’d ever had one of those. The lump of a man flew into the wall, clear of the rail, and thumped down on a ledge next to the tracks, wide enough for a single maintenance worker to walk along it if he were not too large.

  “Reed!” I shouted as I shook off the effects of the shock and flew over to the mass. I rolled him face-up, stared down and saw—

  Eric Simmons?

  “I’m fine, thanks,” Reed said, the whoosh of wind filling the tunnel as he coasted out of the hole he’d made in the front of the train windshield and landed next to me. I hit him with a very uncharacteristic and unexpected hug, lifting him clear of the ground before he could protest. I set him back down a moment later, remembering myself. “I can take of myself, you know,” he said slyly.

  “I know,” I said, brushing it off like I hadn’t just overreacted in relief. “I was just … uhm …” I stopped trying to come up with a flimsy excuse. “Whatever. I’m glad you’re okay.”

  “Clearly,” he said with a smirk that was visible even in the dark. He made a gesture at the train. “Numbnuts here vibrated us so hard we derailed. I managed to get airborne in order to avoid the worst of the crash, but …” He got a distinctly unhappy look. “It’s bad in there, Sienna.” I felt my relief at his safety evaporate. “We messed up big time on this one.”

  8.

  Emergency services responded quickly. No fatalities, which was the only bright spot. News trucks showed up even before all the ambulances got there, and they had live reports going out as the first stretchers were being carried out of the Canal Street Station. I got caught on camera, of course, and even though the NYPD had established a cordon, about ten thousand shouted questions hit my ears as I made my way to the nearest squad car and sat in the passenger side, trying to shake off the cold.

  “Rocha,” I said, “Harper. Status report.”

  “We’re blocks away,” Rocha said. “Parked up on Broadway.”

  “Status? Well, that was a Charlie Foxtrot,” Harper opined.

  “Not only did we lose the brain,” I said, “but Simmons’s phone was destroyed and he managed to injure twenty-eight people and wreck a subway train in the process.” I did not put my head in my hands, acutely aware that I was being watched by more cameras than I could count. “Reed?”

  “Yeah,” he said, and he didn’t sound happy.

  “We need to get out of here,” I said. “You got Simmons?”

  “Trussed up like he’s a roast ham,” Reed said. “You think the NYPD is going to happily let him go after this?”

  “Not happily, no,” I said, “but I doubt they’re going to want to put a guy who can cause earthquakes at will into any of their jails or prison units. This is our jurisdiction. I’ll talk to Welch and get it cleared.” Again I had to fight the urge to hang my head, the despair at how badly this had gone wrong was so thick. “Also, I’m starving.”

  “I’ve made arrangements with the plane,” Rocha said. “They’re waiting at LaGuardia, but they won’t be prepped to fly for another two hours. They’re still loading the cell to contain Simmons.”

  I gave that one about a moment’s thought. It had come to my attention in the last couple years that the U.S. Government was exceedingly well equipped for transferring metahuman prisoners, considering they had purportedly been out of that business since the 1990s. I’d seen blueprints detailing about thirty different types of meta restraint devices, useful both for short-term prisoner transfer and long-term containment. It was a little disconcerting, but I suppose we hadn’t gotten in trillions of dollars of debt just spending $500 per hammer.

  “So we’ve time to kill,” I said, and heard a faint rumbling in my stomach. I hadn’t gotten my coffee, and worse, now I was hungry. “Suggestions?” I asked, not really sure what would come back.

  “Shawarma?” Reed asked, and at first I thought he was joking.

  It made me a little angry, no lie. “You ass,” I said. Then I thought about it for a minute, and—dammit—the idea held some appeal. When else was I going to get a chance to try shawarma? “Is there a shawarma joint around here?” I asked, a little cautiously.

  Reed’s answer came back with an obvious smile leaking into his voice. “I know a place.”

  9.

  The shawarma wasn’t bad, but it would have been better if Eric Simmons hadn’t woken up about halfway through the meal.

  The smell of the meat filled the air, wafted through my nose, and every bite was a deeply satisfying antidote to my rumbling stomach. Reed stared at me from across the table. Simmons was next to us, unconscious in the seat at the end of the table, bound hand and foot with meta restraints.

  When Simmons opened an eye, I sighed. I had been enjoying myself, even though I’d been watching him like a paranoid person the entire time. As I should have.

  “What … the hell?” he asked, sitting up in his chair. It was pretty obvious when he came to, not just because of the eye-opening, but also because his neck
had been drooping back, his body slack, and that changed in a second. He sat up with a start, taking it all in with a confused and befuddled look.

  “It’s called lunch,” I said, taking a bite of my shawarma. “If you’re good, you’ll get some. If you’re not, I’ll club you unconscious and leave you drooling blood on the floor while we eat.”

  He blinked his eyes at me, as though I were a blast of harsh daylight after he’d spent a month in a tunnel. Sorta true, I guess. “Sienna Nealon,” he muttered and lowered his head.

  “That’s me,” I said, pausing to take another bite. I spoke as I chewed. Rude, I know, but I was hungry. “You want to make our lives easier and tell us who your girlfriend is and where we can find her?”

  “I don’t have a girlfriend,” Simmons said sullenly, his face going slack and falling. He cased the area around us in seconds, looking for an easy escape route. Not finding one, he drew his eyes back to me.

  “Would you like more to drink?” The waitress appeared over Rocha’s shoulder, pitcher in hand. She spoke with a slight accent, nothing too heavy.

  “Hey,” Simmons said and broke into a grin. She looked over at him uncertainly; the place was near empty except for us and the staff. “Would you like a big tip?” His grin got wider. “Or would you like the whole thing—”

  I lashed out and kicked his chair out from under him, sending him to the floor. I enjoyed a flood of satisfaction at the panicked look on his face as he hit that moment of weightlessness when he reflexively knew his chair was gone and he was falling but his conscious mind hadn’t worked out what had happened quite yet. He hit the ground and all the air rushed out of him. I was on top of him a second later and slammed a fist into his jaw. “Be polite,” I cautioned him, menace edging into my voice. “Don’t be a pig.”

  “Damn, girl!” he moaned, cracking his body as he took assessment of what I’d just done to him. He was cringing in pain. I knew he wasn’t really injured, but he was making a good show of it. “You are ruthless!”

  “Yes,” I said, “I am ruthless. And if you make another unpleasant comment to the waitstaff, you’re going to be toothless. Ruthless and Toothless, that’ll be us. And oh, what a pair we’ll make, me beating your ass all over lower Manhattan.”

  He gave me a seething look. “If you didn’t have your power …” He just let his voice trail off.

  “You’d what?” I asked. “Shake me? Bake me? I’m not chicken, jackass. If I didn’t have my power, I’d shoot you in the head.” I took my index finger and jabbed him in the skull, eliciting an Ow! of pain that was probably sincere. “You, on the other hand, are a thief and a chickenshit.” I gave him the evil eye. “It comes down to it, you’ll always run from someone who gets all up in your face. Coward.”

  “You should smile more.” Simmons turned back to me with a nasty smirk. “You’re on camera.” I glanced up to see people with cell phones just outside the window, and I felt my heart sink. “How long do you think it’ll be before this shows up on YouTube?” Simmons laughed, a low, mean, guttural sound. “Because I’m guessing it’s uploading already.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” I said, hauling him up by his collar and tipping his chair back up with my foot. I threw him into it and yanked it close. He didn’t resist, just sat there grimacing like he was still hurting. “I’ve got discretion over what to do with metahuman criminals, and as of right now, that means your ass belongs to me.” I smiled at him. “I think I could fit that whole chair up inside you without killing you if I was of a mind to. Care to find out?”

  “You’re violating my rights,” he said, and I realized his lip was bloody as a small dribble made its way down his chin.

  “I’m all set to violate more than that,” I said. “You have the right to remain silent. I suggest you exercise it, you pig.” I leaned back in my chair. “Does your girlfriend get mad when you talk to other girls like that?” I waved vaguely in the direction of the waitress, who was now wisely keeping her distance. If she’d thought we were just enthusiastic 50 Shades cosplayers when we came in, she knew better now.

  He looked ready to snap something out, but thought the better of it. “I told you,” he said, with a nasty little look, “I don’t have a girlfriend.”

  “Come on,” I said, “we know you’re not the brains of the operation, Simmons, because you don’t have any of your own.” I smiled. “Tell us who she is. We’ll go easier on you.”

  He snorted, and I could tell he wasn’t buying it. “You have no idea what you’ve started.”

  “I’ve started beating the shit out of you,” I said, and stood up, grabbing him by the shoulder and dragging him to his feat. “You better hope I don’t finish.” I threw a look at the others. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.” I didn’t wait for them to reply, just started dragging Simmons out of the shawarma place while half a dozen cell phones recorded my every move.

  10.

  The flight back to Minneapolis was blessedly uneventful, and we made our landing at Eden Prairie’s Flying Cloud airport shortly before sunset, which was just after five in the afternoon. Stuffing Simmons into a storage tank (literally a tank, filled with gel that negated his vibratory powers) had taken a while, even though he didn’t offer anything more than an annoying verbal commentary for resistance. The tank was soundproof, thankfully, and Reed, Harper, Rocha and I rode in the C-130 back to Minnesota almost in silence.

  Almost.

  “On approach to Flying Cloud airport,” the pilot announced, “fifteen minutes to touchdown.”

  I thanked my lucky stars as I felt the plane bank into a turn. I didn’t really love flying on these military C-130’s. Not only was the bathroom a curtained-off area at the back of the plane that almost always smelled like it had been used exclusively by men with poor aim, but the pilots also didn’t truck with any of that sissy crap that the airlines insisted on for the comfort of their passengers, like gentle turns. Military pilots were authorized to go from point A to point B in a hurry, and they did that. Worries about airsickness were secondary.

  On the whole, I’d rather have flown myself, but unfortunately I had to stay on the plane with Simmons to make sure he didn’t get up to any trouble. Unlikely, I know, but better safe than allowing a quake-causing dipshit to go free-range again.

  Reed looked over at me as we went into a steep turn to the left. “Almost home.”

  “Yeah,” I said, probably a little sourly on account of the not-so-smooth ride. “Maybe you can have a little Italian for dinner tonight,” I sniped.

  He narrowed his eyes at me. “Gah, you’re banging on that drum again.” I caught the flinch as he realized what he said a moment too late. “Go on,” he said resignedly, “hit me.”

  “I’d have to bang on it a lot more to catch up with how many times you’ve …” I gave it up halfway through, catching the pitying look from him, and changed tacks, “… gone on about surveillance states and indefinite detention.” Then I flinched, because I’d set myself up much worse than he’d just done, and just as unintentionally.

  He leaned over to me and lowered his voice to a whisper so low that only a metahuman sitting a foot away could have heard it over the engine noise. “Does it not bother you at least a little that we’ve basically become the judge, jury and executioner for metas?”

  We should execute more of them, Bjorn said.

  I ignored the voice in my head, pondered a smug and snarky answer, which he would promptly batter aside, and tried for something a little more truthful. “I think it would bother me more,” I said, “if we didn’t presently have in our prison some of the foulest a-holes known to man. I mean, seriously,” I said, throwing in a little of the snark that I’d previously withheld, “our little prison is well-named if we call it a penal system, because they are all of them dicks.”

  He gave me a slightly pained look, and I recognized it as disappointment in my pat answer. “They get no trials to speak of. They have zero recourse. We put them in the ground and don’t allow them to see the ligh
t of day. What if we have an innocent person in there?”

  “We don’t,” I said, dead certain. “And you know we don’t. You’re speaking in hypotheticals of what might happen in the future.” This much was true; we’d caught every one of our current prisoners in some sort of act of criminality, greater or lesser. There was no doubt in my mind as to any of their guilt, not with as low a population as we were dealing with.

  “What about your buddy?” he asked, and he withheld the judgmental satisfaction that I knew was coming. “What about Logan?”

  I felt a pained expression work its way onto my face. Timothy Logan was a bit of sore point for me, because he’d been involved in some low-ranging crimes in a rural jurisdiction. He was guilty, no doubt, but he hadn’t been violent and he’d expressed a lot of remorse. He was, bar none, our easiest prisoner, and I was of a mind to parole him soon-ish. “I don’t have absolute power over these people, okay?” I said. “You know that the DoJ and Homeland Security are just as much in charge of this as I am.”

  “And that doesn’t worry you?” His penetrating gaze was annoying. Really annoying. His accurate points in regards to Timothy Logan were even more so. “They haven’t ever interfered with your judgment.”

  “That’s because so far,” I said as we started to descend, a lot sharper than a commercial airliner would, “I haven’t let anyone go.” Passengers? Nah. We were cargo to our pilots. I glanced back at Simmons, up to his neck in gel, and the parallel was not lost on me.

  Reed sat back, looking hideously uncomfortable. “It’s just not right. It’s like those Russians they dug out of that Siberian prison a few months ago.” He stared at me. “You know what I’m talking about?”

  “It would have been hard to miss,” I said. They’d been on pretty much every news broadcast, and I’d gotten email forwards from what seemed like everyone in the government from the White House on down. It was turning into a real human interest story, the tale of four metas locked up by the Soviet Union for mysterious and unremembered crimes, left to rot for thirty years and through multiple regime changes. I had enough requests for comment from reporters that printing them all out would have deforested ten planet Earths.