Ruthless (Out of the Box Book 3)

by Robert J. Crane

  Headquarters? Wasn’t I supposed to go there for some reason?

  It didn’t matter now. Now was a time for sleep. It was night, after all, and night was a time for sleep.

  I heard the sound of crunching snow over the distant ringing in my ears, and then I felt strong arms roll me over. I blinked at the shadow of the figure stooping over me. My gloveless fingers caught his arm and I felt smooth leather, slightly wet from the falling flakes melting on the surface.

  I felt him gather me up, like a child being picked up by a parent, cradled safe and warm. The darkness was near-complete, and he started to walk, to carry me. Something in my mind said, meta. I told it to shut up, because I needed to sleep.

  “Hi,” I said, my voice dragging, muted, barely audible above that persistent ringing.

  “Hey, Sienna,” the man said, and even though I couldn’t hear him all that well, I knew that voice. It was smooth, it was calm, it was … sweet?

  The steps were slow, steady progress over the snow field, and I could see the dormitory building looming over us in the shadows. Why were the lights off? That was weird, wasn’t it?

  I wanted to close my eyes, but felt strangely riveted to this man, his shadowy face that I couldn’t even see, his smooth and familiar voice. He carried me on, and I felt him adjust my weight as he did something. Then I closed my eyes in shock as light flooded my senses. I cracked them back open again, blazing brightness overwhelming me as I stared up. I locked onto his face at last, even as I felt the tiredness—the darkness—welling up to get me for the last time.

  It was Scott Byerly.

  I stared at him for a moment, his dusty blond hair all but hidden under a ski cap. Then my muscles gave out, and I felt myself go limp, safe in his arms, as I pitched into a deep, deep sleep.

  39.

  Natasya

  “I think we can conclude that the men I sent after her are either dead or incapacitated,” Natasya said into the phone, waiting for the judgment on the other side.

  None came. “If they kept her busy, then they’ve fulfilled their function,” the voice said.

  Natasya stared out into the night. She was at the corner of the building on the fourth floor, looking out into the darkness at the parking garage in the distance. She’d heard gunfire as the mercenaries she’d dispatched after the girl caught her trail, but they’d disappeared inside some time ago and no significant noise had emerged since save for a subtle pop that could have been a muffled explosion.

  The garage was little more than a cluster of lights in the distance, a looming shadow only slightly less dark than the dormitory building in the distance. With one last look, Natasya turned from it and strode back into the headquarters, leaving the perimeter office behind.

  “How much longer?” the voice asked.

  “How long until you’re in the network?” Natasya replied evenly.

  “I am working on it, but I’m being perpetually thwarted,” the voice said with a coolness all her own. “You should nearly be done executing the first contingency now.”

  “And we are,” Natasya said. “If you want a status report, you should contact Vitalik.”

  There was a moment of pondering. “I will. Call me if the situation changes.”

  “Very well,” Natasya said, threading her way into the interior bullpen. This was a working space that had been cleared through the supervised labor of the party guests. It had been good for them, these fat, slovenly pigs, forced to put their backs into clearing a space where they could sit and have men point guns at their overfed faces. They’d sweated, some cried, a few stubborn refusals had bruises to show for their defiance. None had gone so far as to warrant a bullet; their resistance was pathetic. And predictable, in her view. They were soft.

  She had eight men left up here. That was all—all that remained of her force of mercenaries in this place, save for the two watching Vitalik’s back downstairs. Ten men, two metahumans. All she had after throwing some two metas and eighteen mercenaries after Sienna Nealon. It was a depressing loss of personnel.

  But it was acceptable.

  For now.

  Every single one of her guards was watching the crowd, save for two patrols working their way around the ring of the building. They strolled through the lushly carpeted hallways, striding between the walls hung with canvases, tall potted plants giving the place an air of green, and she tried not to be sick at the wasteful display.

  She wandered into the middle of them, looking at the cowed and cowering hostages. Not a fighter among them. Not a soul of resistance in their midst. The security force had all been drugged, disarmed and locked away. If it had been up to Natasya, she would have made the poison lethal, but the voice had insisted on a compound that would merely knock them out. That left a question mark in Natasya’s mind, having those men still breathing, but she did as the voice commanded.

  After all, she’d laid siege to two different bastions of America’s government in the last two days, and whatever success they’d had was due to the voice’s planning and knowledge. While she’d lost two of her own men, that could happen on any operation. Especially one this deep in enemy territory, and against such an unpredictable foe.

  Still, she’d learned long ago that objectives mattered more than losses. While she felt for her lost comrades, Volkov had died stupidly, and through no one’s fault but his own. Whatever had happened to Miksa was more ambiguous, but still well within the realm of acceptable losses.

  And she intended to lose absolutely no one else.

  “Who is in charge of this place?” Natasya asked, wondering aloud. She hadn’t even thought to ask before, because it was utterly irrelevant. The voice had been so certain that as soon as they were under siege, the prison would be locked down against any access, even that of high-level administrators. There would be no option but to unlock it electronically or physically.

  A large man, sandy blond, cool and composed, stood up. His legs wavered as he did so, though Natasya couldn’t be certain whether that was from nerves or simple prolonged inactivity coupled with age. “I am,” he said. “My name is Andrew Phillips. I’m the director of this agency.” The tone was neutral, absent any defiance or fear, just a simple statement of fact.

  “Oh, yes,” Natasya said, staring at him. “I met you before, when we came here.” She felt herself smile, lightly amused. “How tragic it is for you, to be so forgettable.”

  He remained expressionless. “It hasn’t worked out too bad so far.”

  Natasya felt a laugh bubble up from within. “An excellent point. Sit down, Director. I have no need of you for anything, and if you keep your people calm, you may live to see the morning.”

  Phillips hesitated, and she could see the wheels turning. “What is your intention here?”

  Natasya blinked, then shrugged. “I intend to open the doors to your prison and free our captured brethren within. Then, under cover of you … lovely, high-profile hostages, we will go to the helipad on your roof and take a chopper to the nearby airport, at which time we will board a waiting plane bound for the tropical paradise of Cuba. There we’ll let our comrades decide what to do with your senators and congressmen, while we soak up the sun.”

  Phillips did not even blink. “That’s a very ambitious plan.”

  Natasya inclined her head in acknowledgment. “Now sit, please.”

  “One question,” Phillips said. “Do you really think the authorities will let you get all the way to Cuba without opposing you?”

  Natasya met his fearless gaze with her own. “If they wish for your people to continue breathing, they will. Though I doubt very much that your police and FBI will even be awake before I am sitting in the airport in Havana.”

  Phillips stared back at her for a moment, like he was pondering pushing his luck and asking another question. Instead he seemed to decide the better of it and sat back down, folding his long legs underneath him and using a cubicle to rest his back. He stared straight ahead, at the floor, as though there were somet
hing of great interest there.

  Natasya’s phone rang, and she answered it without saying a word. “I have something for you,” Vitalik said on the other side. She could hear the triumph in his voice.

  “Are you done?” she asked, already almost certain of the answer.

  “I am done,” he said, and she could hear him smiling from here. “Only one task remains, and for that I will need your help.”

  “I am on my way,” Natasya said and put the phone back in the case on her belt. She’d changed out of her party dress hours ago, and felt the better for it. Fatigues: this was the attire appropriate for the party she wanted to attend.

  And now all she needed do was descend to the basement prison, and the party she had planned could begin in earnest.

  40.

  Sienna

  I awoke with the natural start of someone who’d been carried off by her ex-boyfriend while in the midst of a deadly game of pursuit by people who wanted to kill me. I went through the rapid cycle of wondering if I’d been dreaming the whole thing, followed by the confusion inherent in finding myself in my own bed, with the room dark around me.

  Then I heard Scott’s voice in the living room and knew I hadn’t dreamed it.

  I was clad in nothing under the sheet. I might have been more offended that someone had undressed me, but I’d been wearing camouflage soaked with snow and ice before, so I let it go. I clutched my blankets close to me and heard Scott cease speaking in the other room, followed by a gentle, “You want to get some clothes on and come join us?”

  “Maybe,” I said, my throat thick with dryness. How long had it been since I’d had a drink of water? “Who is ‘us’?”

  The door opened and I pulled the sheet close to my body as a purely reflexive measure. I saw long, dark hair and a woman wearing a cocktail dress, and I felt the urge to in sigh relief and exasperation all at once. “Dr. Perugini,” I said.

  “I sewed up your wound,” she said, pulling the door shut behind her. “Nasty little cut, but unsurprising given the window stunt.” She shook her head at me. “Stupid. Very stupid.”

  “I didn’t choose to go out the window,” I said, irritable. “It was sort of forced upon me. Also, it didn’t turn out so bad, since I’m still alive.”

  “Through no fault of your own,” she said, glaring at me.

  “Sienna,” came my brother’s voice from the living room. “Would you mind saving the bickering for later? We’ve got things to talk about here.”

  “Yeah,” I said and threw the sheets back, flashing Dr. Perugini, who rolled her eyes to avert them. I opened the closet door and ignored the square, empty space that greeted me under my clothes. I grabbed jeans and a shirt, then made my way over to my dresser and pulled fresh socks and underwear, and threw them all on while Dr. Perugini faced the door. As an afterthought, I went back to the closet and stood on my tiptoes, grabbing my auto shotgun off the top shelf and snatching up the big box of ammo with it.

  Perugini’s eyes got wide, and she shook her head at me. She didn’t say anything, but I got the sense she didn’t like me playing with guns. I gave zero craps, and walked past her into the living room to find Scott and Reed huddled around a cell phone that was plugged into the wall, charging. They were just standing there, like it was an object of worship for their primitive Neanderthal society. “It’s a cell phone,” I said, causing both of them to look at me in confusion. “Are you two mesmerized? I feel like I’m staring at cavemen who just discovered fire—”

  “Hey, Sienna.” A weak, whispered voice came from the cell phone speaker.

  I frowned. “Is that … J.J.?”

  “In the not-so-flesh.”

  “He’s in headquarters,” Reed said, giving me an appraising look. It took me a second to realize he was scoping the damage rather than checking me out. Because that would be ewwwww. “He’s tapped into the network, trying to block the terrorists out of the system.”

  “And so far succeeding, despite some pretty impressive efforts on their part,” J.J.’s voice came from the speaker. “Whoever they’ve got on their side is very, very good. I’m holding on by the skin of my cuticles here.”

  “Were you the one who’s been helping me?” I asked, easing closer to the phone. Perugini was at my side, but at an appropriate distance since she and I didn’t like each other.

  “The very same,” J.J. said. “Sorry about the sprinklers.”

  “You had to do it,” I said, staring at the little box producing his tinny voice. “Are you safe?”

  “Mmm, probably not,” he said. “But I’ve got access to every camera on campus, and I know where all their guys are, so even though I’m in the belly of the beast, I’m okay for now. I’m hiding in a closet on the second floor.”

  I felt a thrill of excitement. Full recon will do that to a girl. Well, at least to a girl like me. Maybe geeks really were a girl’s best friend after all. “How many are there and where are they?”

  “How did I know you’d be straight to business?” He didn’t sound like he was surprised. “Two on roving patrol on the fourth floor, six guarding the hostages, two mercs plus the remaining Russkie metas heading down into the prison as we speak.”

  “Shiiiiiiiit,” I said, and Reed nodded along. I glanced at Scott, who was watching me with only minor interest, comparatively speaking. “Are they through the final door, yet?”

  “They’re in,” J.J. said. “But the cell doors are still locked down, so they’ve got a little ways to go. I’m keeping the place in lockdown—”

  “Wait, how did they get into the prison?” I asked.

  “Vitalik is a frost giant or something,” Reed said, not looking all that thrilled. “He froze the door all the way through and they busted it to pieces. Then he and the mercs set off a chem bomb of some kind in the corridor of death and smoked out the guards, rinsed and repeated the freeze trick on the door to the prison.”

  “Crapola, crapola, and crapola,” I said. “What are they doing now?”

  “This Vitalik guy made a quick beeline to one cell in particular,” J.J. said. “Eric Simmons.”

  “I just put him in there,” I said plaintively.

  “Well, he’s almost out now,” J.J. said. “I give it five minutes and he’s going to be a free man.”

  “What’s their next play?” I asked, then shook my head. “Never mind, you couldn’t possibly know that—”

  “The Russian lady told Phillips they’re going to evacuate under the cover of hostages before the authorities can arrive,” J.J. said. “Gonna take the high-level ones on a helicopter ride to a plane, then jet out of the country to Cuba.”

  “How could you possibly know that?” I asked, mystified. “We don’t have microphones on our security cameras.”

  “True,” J.J. said. “But we do have them on pretty much every computer in the building, built-in and ready to transmit to anyone who can access the network. Webcams, too.” He sounded a little sheepish. “Plus, I might maybe have hacked into our VME Dominator. Not quite as skilled with it as Roche, but I can do a few things—”

  “Are the Russians working for someone?” I asked, suddenly urgent. My time was expiring, and fast.

  “Yes,” J.J. said. “But I can’t hear the voice, even though I’ve intercepted a couple calls. It sounds a lot like what Rocha reported in New York. I’m picking up one side of the conversation only, direct through the microphone.”

  “That explains why Simmons is the priority rescue,” Reed said grimly. “The brain decided to spring him.”

  “Seems like this is our mystery brain’s go-to move,” J.J. said, “the cell phone thing? Most people would just carry a radio.”

  “When I catch up with this mystery brain, I’m going to turn them into mystery meat,” I said. “We’ve got to stop them. If Simmons gets out—”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Scott said, nodding along. “Sounds like this guy can make the San Andreas fault look like a gentle shaker.”

  “If he was of a mind to,” I said.
“I don’t really want to deal with that, personally.”

  “How you feeling?” Reed asked, nodding at me.

  “Weak,” I said. “Powerless.” I lifted a hand and placed it on Scott’s cheek. He recoiled, a little surprised, frowning all the while. I held it there for ten seconds, then twenty. “Yeah, still powerless.”

  “Why would you use me to test that?” he asked, more than a little cross.

  “Because you’ve still got your power,” Reed said, and now I knew why he was glum.

  “Et tu?” I asked, staring at him.

  “I was getting you a drink when I realized the barman was a plant,” Reed said and nodded to Perugini. “Didn’t know how to make anything. When the suppressant bomb went off, I was trying to get Isabella to the exit. When I went to clear the air after the blue smoke …” He held a hand up and cringed, not so much as a wisp of air moving at his command. “Performance issues.”

  “Getting old, eh?” Scott cracked and snapped his fingers, causing water to splash lightly from his hand in a line as thin as a kid’s squirt gun.

  “At least I don’t go spraying all over the place,” Reed volleyed back, amusement creasing his forehead.

  Dr. Perugini made a harrumphing noise a moment before I could make one of my own to bring us back on target. “Prison break, yes?” She shuddered. “Do not forget, Anselmo and his hench-loons are in there.”

  “We need a plan,” I said, staring at the blackout curtains strung in front of my windows. Now I knew why the lights were off; J.J. was trying to make it look like no one was home.

  “Ooh, I got one,” J.J. said. “Come over here and kill all the bad guys. You seem like you’re good at that.”

  “Priority has to be the prisoners,” Scott said, jaw tight. “They get out, you’ve got pretty much just me, a water-thrower, against … whatever you’ve been capturing lately.” He said it without an ounce of disdain, which was … predictable, in its way.

  “Angels, only, I assure you,” Reed said with a smirk. “Of the fallen variety, maybe. Hell beasts, and Anselmo is pretty much the worst. But I think we should make the hostages priority.” He shrugged when all eyes turned to him. “They’re innocent people.”