Anselmo pulled the grenade from his mouth, held it in his hand, and started to laugh. “You think this wil—”
He didn’t get anything else out before the Willie Pete lit off in a flare of heat, and Anselmo Serafini disappeared in a white-hot burst of flame.
47.
I’d seen people burned to death before, but I’d never seen someone with nearly impervious skin get exposed to that level of heat before. It was sickening and amazing all at once. Anselmo let out a piercing scream, high and agonized, like the girls he hated so much. It smelled like chemical scorch, pervasive and heavy, roasted meat that flooded my nose and choked my mouth, like I could taste it. The heat fell off the white phosphorus like I’d pulled an Icarus, gotten too close to the sun, and when I got to my feet, I did so in awe of the miniature star that had been born before me.
The idiot had held it up in his hand and was staring at it when it went off, and the flames covered him now. He was a top of the scale meta in terms of power, and that meant his ability to heal from injury was presumably right up there with my boy Wolfe. Using Wolfe’s power, I could regrow a limb in ten seconds, heal a cut in less than one second, and even harden my skin against future injury of the same type. Wolfe hadn’t had the innate invulnerability to physical damage that Anselmo had; he’d picked his up through several thousand years of flesh damage of all kinds, from burns to bludgeons.
In the days of yore, against hordes of fighting men, a meta of Anselmo’s type had taken on entire armies and beaten them. They were nigh invulnerable against spears, swords, horseman and all the other weapons available to the men of the day.
But apparently, no one had ever tried burning an Achilles’ skin off with white phosphorus.
It was definitely sloughing off, and his body was fighting back to heal him—and succeeding, to some extent. I watched him writhe in the flames, curiously detached. I should have been feeling something, anything—but I didn’t. Reed had told me about him, and we’d gotten more from the Italian authorities—reluctantly—later. He was a monster, a beast of basest instinct and little restraint. The cage I’d put him in was too kind by half, in my opinion, for what he’d done to those around him.
And that was just the stuff we knew about.
His skin burned and sloughed off down to bone and then regrew muscle and sinew seconds later, turning angry red as it came back and burned clean again. It was like watching the tide battle the sand, and the tide—the Willie Pete—seemed like it was inevitably going to swallow him.
Anselmo fell to his knees in the fire, the smoke getting incredibly heavy in the room. His vocal chords quit, and I could hear a wet hissing over the steam. I didn’t know where it was coming from.
No, scratch that. I didn’t want to know where it was coming from.
“Sienna,” Scott said, and I could hear the horror and awe in his voice. “Sienna,” he said again, and I woke from my trance of watching this psychotic beast burn and burn again. “The prison break?”
“Right,” I said, shaking myself out of it. We still had Vitalik and Natasya to go. And Simmons.
“They’re on the move,” J.J. said, his voice a hushed whisper. I guess he was watching on the security cameras. “Heading to the roof. The police on the perimeter just reported a chopper flyover. They’re moving to extract.”
“Dammit,” I said, “let’s get them,” and started toward the stairs. I just ignored the flaming pile of Anselmo, somewhere in the white-hot fire. I could still hear him moving around in there, but it wasn’t like there was a lot I could do for him either way. I mean, I could have Scott put the fire out, maybe, but assuming Anselmo was still alive, that wouldn’t exactly do me a lot of good.
So I left him burning and headed for the stairs.
“NOOOOOOO!” J.J. cried out into my ear, loud enough that I almost yanked the microphone out.
“What the hell, man?” Scott asked for me. I looked back to seem him cringing from it. His hearing was meta, so it was better than Reed or mine’s, at least at the moment. His expression was pained.
“Sienna,” J.J. said, his tone verging on panic, “problem.”
“No more problems,” I said, halting, looking back at the white phosphorus fire, still doing … what it did. “Solutions, please.”
“Problem, man,” he said. “I was watching you guys during the Anselmo thing and I—aw, dammit! Aw, damn!”
“J.J.,” Reed said. “What is the dilly-yo?” I blinked at him; he shrugged.
Weirdo, my look said.
You should talk, his said in reply. Point taken.
“The brain, man,” J.J. said, “the brain was still breaking through our—they were using our network access, and I’d been blocking them, but I lost focus and—they’re in! They’re totally in.” He just deflated, from sixty to zero like he had the best brakes in the world. “We’re compromised.”
I just stood there, waiting for translation. “And this matters why …? Their people are running like scared squirrels.” This time, Reed gave me the look. My return look said, Don’t judge.
“Because—oh, God, I can see what they’re doing,” he said, low and scared. “Because the brain—whoever they are—they’re watching through the cameras, first of all, but second—and so much worse …”
“Spit it out, dude,” I said, making for the stairs again. “I have zero time.”
“They’re working on opening the doors of every prisoner in the Cube,” J.J. said. “In about two minutes, every prisoner we’ve got is … they’re all … they’re all about to get a real early release.”
47.
I was so hot I felt like I was going to burst into flames like Anselmo, but from the inside. The brain opened my prison. Seriously. I was the warden of that place—still, I think? Damn Phillips. Whatever the case, I felt a sense of responsibility for it all, since I’d put those clowns there. I couldn’t remember off the top of my head how many of them were left, but almost every one of them was a seriously bad dude, villains with first-rate ambitions and last-rate executions. Not high on the power scale, but right at the top of the vicious scale.
How did they get there? Power unchecked. I’d done some reading on their backgrounds in the course of the investigations that led me to them. Every one of them, without exception, started small and grew into a killer. They thought they could get away with it, and they did, their schemes and contempt for order growing larger and larger.
Until I showed up.
This was how the old gods were made, I knew. That hubris, that feeling that no one could stop them? It came from the fact that no one could. When the cops showed up to bring you in and you took down all of them, it was a rush. A sense of youthful imperviousness is common, in greater or lesser form, in most people under the age of twenty. A sense of lawlessness and a total lack of need for impulse control common to the criminal class. Want, take, have, I’ve heard it expressed. Because when you’re a person with power, who’s gonna stop you?
No one had stood up to these cowards. Every time someone had tried, they’d come out on top. They thought they were invincible, like Anselmo, although they didn’t have a tenth of his power. They could put a hell of a show on for the local PD, though, that was for sure. Put a dozen cops in the hospital with their schtick.
But you put me up against any one of them on my worst day, and they’re a smear on the pavement when I get irritable.
I was heading down when I should have been heading up, and I was getting angrier by the minute. This brain was a pain in my ass, and I was resolved to find him, her, or it at my earliest convenience.
Unfortunately, if they kept throwing these obstacles in my way, it was going to be later rather than sooner that I’d get to make good with my threat.
I threw open the door to the lobby and headed straight for the tunnel. I was seeing red, crimson, maroon, chartreuse, and every other color of the spectrum related to rage and fury. I had my shotgun in hand, my Glock reloaded in my holster, and I was striding with a purpose
toward the security room when Reed hauled on my arm and stopped me cold.
“What the hell are you doing, Sienna?” His voice was whisper-quiet, a hush, urgent and fearful all at once. “There are like twenty people down there who would love to get their hands on you, and you’ve got no powers, in case you forgot.”
“I haven’t forgotten,” I said and ripped my arm free.
“You could die!” Reed said, doing a yelling whisper. I didn’t think that was possible, but he managed it. “They’re not gonna go light on you just because you’re chemically under the weather!”
“They’re not gonna do jack to me,” I said and ripped open the door. I was heading down into the tunnel with my shotgun raised and a sneer on my lips.
“What the hell makes you say that?” Reed asked, following behind me like he knew, for a fact, that I’d lost my damned mind.
“Because of what they haven’t forgotten,” I said.
I walked into the Cube to find the doors sliding open to every single cell. Men were stepping out with that cocky look on their faces, but still a little hesitantly, peeking to see what was up, how this significant change to their interminable daily routine was going to work out.
“Hey there, Lady Warden,” Crow Vincent said, stepping out of the cell nearest me. He had a wicked grin on his face, and was doing this little shoulder bob walk as he stepped outside. I guess he thought it looked cool. “Looks like you’re out of guards. Saw a couple of your detainees go walking out the door.” He grinned. “Looks like you ain’t having a great day.”
“It’s night, actually,” I said and looked at him, hard. I saw Timothy Logan peeking out of the cell just behind him, like he wasn’t sure whether he should come out or not. “You hear any of what those guys were discussing?”
Crow just laughed. “Didn’t need to hear anything. School’s out, baby.” He swept an arm around. “Looks like a weekend pass, huh?”
“Get back in your cells,” I said, raising my voice and using that hard edge voice I can summon up on command.
“I figured you were dead,” Crow said, taking a step closer to me. “Figured no one would get one over on the Lady Warden.” He made a hiss of a laugh. “But you’re weak, girl. You must be slipping, to let them fools in here, let them walk out of here, let them open all the doors.”
“It’s a technical glitch,” I said, staring him down. “You’ll want to be getting back in your cells now.” I didn’t feel a need to attach a threat, because a threat at this point would probably be less effective. Let their imaginations run wild, I figured.
Crow turned his head sideways, and I remembered why they called him Crow. “I don’t think I need to be—”
I raised the barrel of the shotgun and blew his head clean off. Blood and all else splattered on the wall behind him as 00 buckshot did its thing to skin and bone.
I waited for the thunder of the gunfire to clear from the air and then spoke into the shocked silence. “Thinking is not a good idea for you all. Your thinking and decision-making have carried every last one of you into these cells, and it’s highly unlikely that it’s going to get you out again any time soon, at least not any way but feet first.” I studied my charges. “Back in the cells, or start rushing me. Maybe if you’re lucky and you all come fast, you can overwhelm me.” I didn’t rack the shotgun, because it was an automatic, but I gave it a subtle flourish. “Who wants to go first? I don’t favor your odds, but if you want to die, let’s get to it. I’ve got other places to be, and some other people to be killing.”
I saw movement across the catwalk, on the far side. Thunder Hayes, his dark eyes staring me down. He was considering it. I would have flattened him, but the shotgun’s reach wasn’t quite far enough for me to do to him what I’d done to Crow, not at this distance. I was bluffing all the way, but I was counting on the fact that every last one of them had a painful, fearful memory of me etched into their deepest neurons. However bad they wanted to kill me and walk free, they had to remember that the last time they’d come up against me, I’d whipped their asses and thrown them down here. For most of them, it was the first defeat of their meta lives.
Which is something they were unlikely to forget.
Months and years of solitary was a lot of time to dwell on the past. I had to guess that the specter of defeat was probably high up on their list of revisited memories. All that time to think, to plan—though most of them weren’t even half-capable planners—and the number one thing they’d be thinking about was how I’d whooped them. That and how I kept bringing more and more whoopees to join the party. An unbroken succession of reminders that they were not nearly so badass as I was. All that time to think, and no chance to prove to themselves that I was anything less than a goddess of wrathful vengeance, the meanest, most vicious release of hell-on-earth that most of them had ever laid eyes on.
Not a bad atmosphere to breed fear.
“You know she’ll do it,” Timothy Logan said, giving the air just the right injection of piss to put out their growing campfire. I could almost hear the hiss as the enthusiasm for revolt guttered out.
“I’ve got control of the doors!” J.J. shouted in my ear. “I got it!”
“Man …” Thunder Hayes said, shaking his head. “It ain’t worth it. We’ll get you some other day, lady. When you ain’t holding a shotty.” He walked back into his cell, trying to keep his head high for pride. But I saw the slump of his shoulders. I saw it in every one of them as J.J. started shutting the doors as they went back inside, one by one giving up on their dream of freedom.
“NO NO NO!” J.J. shouted as I stared at the last three, already turning to go back inside. They were savoring their moment of freedom, I guess.
“I don’t like it when you say that,” I muttered.
“They’re in the PA system! They’re gonna—!”
He didn’t even finish before I heard the snap hiss of the overhead speaker, followed by a female voice.
“You shouldn’t give up so easily,” she said low, almost breathless. “Sienna Nealon is powerl—”
I blasted the speaker with my shotgun, a shot sixteen feet straight up that shattered plastic and drew sparks. “This isn’t your party,” I said, irritable. “So get the hell out.” I covered the last three with my shotgun, stock against my shoulder. “Back inside,” I said, reaffirming my control over the situation. They dawdled, but they went back in, and J.J. shut the doors with a clank. “Are we clear here?” I asked.
“I’m trying to purge it out of the system—”
“Her,” I said, thinking about that voice. “The brain is a her.” I looked up at the ceiling. “And she should know that I’m coming for her. I don’t care if it takes an hour, a year, ten decades or a thousand years …” I hardened my voice and stared into the nearest surveillance camera with all my furious fortitude, sure she was still watching. “I am coming for you, lady.”
“Wow,” Reed said, “I think I just crapped myself in fear a little.”
“Chopper just took off from the roof with the escapees,” J.J. said.
“Get the Air National Guard on the phone,” I said. “Shoot ’em down.”
“That could take a while, this time of night,” J.J. said, and I turned to walk back up the ramp. Reed and Scott fell in beside me, exchanging a look between them that was somewhere in the neighborhood of So, that just happened, right? and a Yeah, brah, in return.
I liked it.
The lady has brass. I heard a faint whisper in the back of my head, like someone talking outside a door. I listened closer but heard nothing more. Did that mean …?
“FBI’s HRT is here,” J.J. interrupted my train of thought, “and they’ve got a chopper of their own with a bunch of sweaty, angry guys who just had to wake up in the middle of the night and fly in from Chicago.” He almost sounded like he was smiling. “They want to know if you’d like to go on an evening ride with them, maybe to the Eden Prairie airport? Because based on the flight vector, that looks like where our escapees are
heading, and it sounds like these guys would like to throw a party of some sort for them there.”
I felt a smile break through my look of harsh, leaden fury as I entered the stairwell, listening to the buzzing of the fluorescent lights as I ascended the steps two at a time. It sounded strangely louder than it had earlier. “Tell them I would love to attend their party,” I said. “And that I’ll meet them on the roof in sixty seconds.”
48.
Natasya
“Whoooooo-eeeeeeeeeee!” Simmons was a child in Natasya’s eyes, a baby she had to sit for, an infant who needed to be burped and taken care of. His requests were unreasonable at best, those of an adolescent at worst. She listened to the voice, now piped through her headset, though, and watched him warily.
“There’s an FBI chopper that’s going to be coming up behind you, and soon,” the voice said. “It swung back to pick up Sienna Nealon, and it’s turning around to pursue you.”
Natasya tried to fill her veins with a sense of ice. This confrontation was edging ever closer to inevitable, this moment between her and Sienna Nealon. “Can we outrun it?”
“It’s a military Black Hawk and you’re in a civilian Huey,” the voice said. “The engine specifications say no.”
Natasya caught the sense of satisfaction in the answer. “But …?”
The voice was smiling on the other end of the connection, of that Natasya was sure. “Stay on course and you’ll be fine.”
Natasya heard that certainty and stared at Simmons, headset on, hanging out of the chopper, and watched his disposition change suddenly. It was like he’d heard something. She watched him turn, slowly, and look at her. He said nothing, just stared for a second, then said, “Yeah,” like he was talking to himself.
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