His expression darkened. “I didn’t order that.”
I rolled my eyes. “Wow. I couldn’t have predicted you singing that particular song again. It’s almost as familiar as asking me, ‘Are you all right?’ after your thugs have just attacked me.” I let my gaze settle on him. “And just as tiresome.”
He pushed his lips together and caused them to subtly turn white from the pressure. “I did not send Claire after you. I ordered her explicitly to stay away from you.” He hesitated. “And your friends,” he added after a moment.
I looked at him, watched him for a response. I had my own ideas about what had happened here, and he didn’t need to know them. “She did mention something of that sort.”
He looked as though he wanted to speak but said nothing for a long moment. “I know I don’t deserve your trust—”
“You nailed that one,” I muttered.
“—and that I’ve done things you … despise,” he said, and his emotions looked closer to the surface than I’d seen from him so far, “and I don’t expect you to believe me right now, but I had nothing to do with what just happened to you. I had to hear about it through … other sources.” He straightened. “Not from Claire, in this case.”
I shrugged. “You’re right. I don’t believe you.” He almost flinched. “But if what you say is true, you’ve got some serious problems in your organizational structure. You might want to worry about them rather than starting your much-vaunted ‘phase two.’”
“I’ll think about it,” he said. “But you should watch your back just the same.”
“Because more of your flunkies are going to come after me?” I asked, twisting the knife a little. “They must have been awfully loyal to Weissman to be so willing to throw their lives away to get back at me.”
Sovereign pursed his lips again. “Yeah. They were. He had this whole … inner circle put together before he even came to me. They’re the ones who started the ball rolling, who began the recruiting process to build the one hundred that they eventually got to. They believed in his vision long before I bought in, and they were all about carrying it out.” He looked suddenly uncomfortable. “Maybe a little too enthusiastically.”
I rolled my eyes again. “Let me guess. This is the part of our conversation where you demonstrate how uncomfortable you are with the partners that you’ve thrown yourself into bed with for this endeavor.”
There was a flicker of emotion that tightened every line of his face, and then it fell. “Like I said, I don’t expect you to believe me. Or understand.”
“But you keep talking anyway.”
“And you keep listening,” he said, looking at me. “Is it just because you’re hoping I’ll give something away that will give you a tactical advantage in a fight?”
“Mostly,” I said.
His eyes met mine, and I sensed a streak of hope within him. “Just ‘mostly’? What’s the rest of your reason for listening?”
“I enjoy a good monologue from time to time,” I said, and I could feel my palms sweating on the leather of my jacket. Yes, in a dream. I still don’t know how that works. “It’s not just about you giving something away. It’s about you constantly overestimating your chances, showing me how arrogant you really are.”
“Maybe I’m just hoping you’ll come around,” he said softly. Sadly, really.
“Don’t bet on it,” I said, still staring him down.
He didn’t say anything, just stared at me. After a moment, he started to fade again. “Take care, Sienna.”
“If I can avoid your thugs,” I said, driving the knife home as he disappeared into the shadows of the dreamwalk, “maybe I will.” I waited for another moment to see if he would respond, but by then the dreamwalk had started to lose its clarity around me, and I fell into a mercifully quiet sleep.
Chapter 20
I woke with the sour face of Dr. Perugini hovering over me, her dark hair gathered back on her head in a bun. Her lab coat was bright white and went marvelously with the ceiling and her olive skin. She was frowning, as she frequently did in my presence.
As far as wake ups go, I think I preferred Sovereign, actually.
The faint beeping of medical machines and my slow, rhythmic breathing reached my ears a moment later. The place smelled of sterile antiseptics, like Perugini had spilled grain alcohol on the floor and never bothered to mop it up. Smelled like whiskey to me, for some reason. Probably because of a bad night I had with—
Never mind.
“Ah, good, you’re awake,” she said.
“Now ‘get out’?” I asked, helpfully filling in her next words for her.
She did not look amused. “You are still missing quite a bit of skin and have several fractures in the process of healing, so no, I would not advise getting out of bed just yet.”
“Gimme a sec,” I said, sitting up uncomfortably. I hurt. A lot. She was probably dead on about that skin being missing, because it felt like it had all been scraped off along my arms from my wrists down to my elbows. I moved with nothing less than a full grimace on my face.
“What the hell are you doing?” Her eyes lit up with anger, and she started to reach for me, probably to hold me down.
“I said give me a second.” I held up a hand and noticed the bandages stretched along my wrist, along with angry red marks down the back of my hand. I closed my eyes, tried to ignore the pain and failed. Still, I managed to muster enough mental discipline to make a call.
Wolfe.
He came forth when I beckoned, and I heard a gasp from Perugini. I opened my eyes as she recoiled from me. Skin was growing along the red wounds on the back of my hands, and I could feel the pain of regrowth beneath the bandages as well. New skin crawled across the red and ragged mess, eliciting a noise of disgust from Perugini. You’d think, as a doctor, she’d be pleased to see her patients healing, but no, apparently not.
The entire process lasted about ten seconds and it was done. Thin trails of blood marked the points where the regrown skin had met up, soft, crusted lines that dotted my pale flesh. “Well, that ought to do it,” I said.
Perugini stared at my newly mended arms and then looked up at me dully before snapping her latex gloves off with a little more gusto. “Well, what do you even need me for?”
“For all that trouble I keep bringing down on others.” I threw back the discolored sheet that lay across my abdomen, ignoring the red-brown blood stains that dotted it and put my feet on the cold floor. “You know, that thing you’re constantly bitching at me about.”
She made a glottal stop noise deep in her throat, a sound of disgust, and then stormed off. She paused only briefly to throw her gloves into the medical waste can before slamming the door to her office.
We had a special relationship, she and I.
I looked down at the hospital style gown that covered my body and made sure to tie the straps in the back before getting out of bed. I wasn’t super enthused at the idea of showing my ass to anybody. Literally, not metaphorically. I metaphorically show my ass to people all the time. It’s fun and usually takes the form of sarcasm.
I sighed and my eyes swept the nearby area. There was a faint beeping in the corner and I glanced over to see Agent Li with an IV tree, lines running toward him. He was either asleep or faking it, and I didn’t want to converse with him badly enough to probe which it was. I saw a bandage on his upper arm and wondered idly how badly he’d been hit. It wasn’t immobilized, so I guessed it wasn’t bad, but I made a mental note to inquire when next I saw someone who would know.
I didn’t see any sign of my clothes, which meant they’d probably been cut off after my rough landing. I wondered if I’d been medically evac’d to the campus and realized it didn’t matter. I was here now, and that was all that counted. The last thing I’d needed was to wake up in some hospital in the Minneapolis suburbs where I could make a doctor scream with the display I’d just graced Perugini with. They probably wouldn’t have taken it as well as she had, especially when it
ended with me disappearing from their care against medical advice.
I felt every cold step on the pads of my feet as I headed toward the door. As I went I pulled the IV out of my arm—I was getting to be a real pro at this by now—and by the time I’d reached the exit the doors whooshed open automatically. I started through and almost ran into a man who was considerably larger than I was. Which is not an accomplishment, really, but he was bigger than even most guys. Tall, dark-skinned, and with eyes that showed no amusement whatsoever. I tried to remember if he’d looked this grim when last I’d seen him, and realized that if I had been dealing with what he’d been dealing with, I’d probably be grimmer, too.
“Hello, Senator,” I said, waving my hand.
Chapter 21
I stopped, realizing that the hospital gown had wide sleeves and I had nothing on underneath. I returned my arm to my side and stood there for a moment while Senator Robb Foreman looked at me in that humorless way. “So nice of you to come visit me while I’m under the weather.”
He did not even raise an eyebrow in amusement. “When are you not under the weather, Nealon?”
“I’ve actually been injured very little lately,” I said, caught a little off guard. “Comparatively speaking.” The number of injuries I’d received needed a bell curve to make the periods of over-achievement look less dramatic. “What brings you out here from Washington?” I frowned. “Or did you come from Tennessee?”
He didn’t look like he’d smiled in weeks. “Tennessee? Oh, yes, I remember Tennessee. It’s the state where I’m supposed to be living, except I’m not because Washington, D.C., owns me lock, stock and barrel. I haven’t been home for more than a night in months.”
He looked like he’d maybe put on a couple pounds since last we’d met, but he was so physically imposing it was hard to be sure. “Seems like—”
“Any cracks about my weight are sure to go unappreciated at the moment,” he said. Damn, he was good with those empathic powers of his. I was only going to dance lightly around the edge of it, but he’d caught enough sarcasm in my emotional state to figure out the probable angle of attack and preempt me. It reminded me, once again, why formidable was always at the top of my list when I searched for adjectives to describe him. He looked at my hospital gown again. “On your way to get clothes?”
I glanced down at the blue-spotted gown and noticed more than a few bloodstains coloring it as well. “I could walk around like this, but I think it would detract from my professional credibility.”
“No, no,” he said, and I caught a hint of give in his voice. “The blood adds an element of, ‘Do what I say or else.’ It’s a reputation enhancer.”
“The things you learn in Washington,” I murmured and stepped through the door to start down the hallway. He fell in beside me. “Since this isn’t a social call—”
“I’ve been getting reports from Li and Ariadne,” he said, back to being all business. “And I’ve read yours as well, when you’ve bothered to send them. I’ve also gotten the notices on things like that Century safe house in Henderson, Nevada.” He looked sidelong at me and I ignored it. “You could say I’m feeling concerned.”
“Glad I’m not the only one,” I said as we reached the stairs to the basement and started to descend. My voice took on an echoing quality as we walked, our footsteps bouncing off the walls around us, magnified like every other noise in this confined space. “Century hasn’t exactly been pulling their punches.”
“You’ve lost personnel to both death and attrition,” he said.
“We’re better off without the ones who have left,” I said. “And as for the dead—”
“You’ve left a trail of dead bodies behind you, both in numbers of people you work with who have died in this conflict as well as ones you’ve killed—” I got the feeling he was going off a list.
“This is war,” I said, waving a hand at him. “War with a highly capable adversary that outnumbers my little army by staggering margins. If you want something casualty-free, try the ballet. When you get super-powerful people with ill intentions coming your way, you better be ready for a violent soirée.”
“Oh, well, you’ve certainly provided a violent soirée,” Foreman said, and now he was sarcastic, but not in a funny kind of way. “I speak of course of that house full of dead bodies in Nevada. Most were unarmed—”
“Bullshit,” I said. “They were metas. We’re never unarmed.” I paused. “Unless, you know, someone actually chops our arms off—”
“Hilarious,” he said in a tone that suggested he found it anything but. “We’ve got a plane crash down in a swamp south of Bloomington. What if that plane had come down a couple miles north, say in the Mall of America or some neighborhood?”
I wanted to be flippant but honestly, I felt a chill contemplating that scenario. “I didn’t crash the plane, okay? I didn’t even know I’d done enough damage to cause it to crash until it was already falling out of the sky.”
Foreman didn’t stop walking and neither did I. He did not look at me. “NTSB is still investigating, but their preliminary reports indicate shrapnel somehow entered the cockpit and injured the pilots so badly they couldn’t continue to fly the plane.” Now he looked at me. “Was that your doing?”
I blinked. “I don’t know. There was a metal door being tossed around, and a lot of heavy hitting between me and the Wolfe brothers, but … no explosions or anything like that. At least not that I can recall.”
“And you’d recall explosions?” Foreman gave me a sour look.
“Probably,” I said, and now I brought the flippant back, full force. “I’m becoming something of an expert at causing them nowadays.”
“So, about this freeway thing—” he said.
“Good grief,” I said, aping Charlie Brown. “I’m not even … what? It had to have been less than a day ago—”
“Three hours,” he said, terse.
I paused as I opened the tunnel leading from headquarters to the dormitory. Fluorescent lights flickered on ahead of us, filling the air with a hum. “Give me a few minutes to compose myself before you start in on this one, okay?”
“There is no more time for composure,” he said. He’d fallen behind me in the tunnel. He grabbed my arm and I twirled instinctively. “The Senate is pulling together an immediate committee to start overseeing metahuman affairs. They’re talking about forming an official agency—”
“That’s no good,” I said with a shake of the head. “I have zero time for Congressional oversight right now.” I held up a hand and waved toward the dormitory entrance in the distance. “I mean, I’m straight out of medical care and back to work, all right? Pretty sure that violates some OSHA regulation in and of itself.”
“This is a nation of laws,” he said gravely. “We’ve been bending them for a long time and now there’s about to be some serious blowback. I’m not the only one reading your Agency’s reports, and it’s scaring a lot of people who get regular intelligence briefings about Russia’s nuclear capacity and how many of their weapons are still pointed at us. This is going to go public in a big way.” His face went slightly slack, and he sighed. “Count on it. There are people in Congress and the White House that want to head it off.”
“God, why now?” I held a hand up to my face, rubbed my palm against my forehead. “Could they pick a worse possible time? Century is in ‘nest of hornets’ mode right now, apparently bending against Sovereign’s will and trying to kill me.”
“That’s what the freeway thing was about,” Foreman said, and it was like a light went on above him. “You’re seeing friction in the organization.” His head bobbled as he pondered it for a second. “That’s a good sign.”
“It’s not a good one for me,” I said with a low growl. “But I’ll grant you that having them fighting amongst themselves provides us with more opportunities for success than having them unified and coming after us with everything they have.”
He shuffled back a step and leaned on the concrete
wall of the tunnel, shoulder first. “I know this isn’t ideal—”
“This is absolutely nightmarish,” I said.
“—but it is what it is,” Foreman said. “It’s not what I would have chosen, but with the run-up to prepare for Sovereign, we’ve had to break this secret—metahuman existence—to a lot wider group of people than it’s ever been exposed to before. We outsourced everything to the Directorate for a damned good reason, but now we’re out of options. You’re under the federal umbrella, for better or worse, and I’m telling you there are holes in it, so that you’re at least a little ready for the rush of cold water that’s coming.”
“They’re really gonna leak it, aren’t they?” I said, dim awareness washing over me.
“We think they already have,” Foreman said softly. “To at least five major press outlets. Three of them dismissed it as utter rubbish, two are investigating. One of the reporters is … dogged, shall we say.” He took in a deep breath and let it out. “We think they have a personal history with a meta-based crime, might have been a witness to something extraordinary.” He grimaced. “Word is, the president is talking to the governors as well in the next few days. He’s circulating a briefing paper on calling up the National Guard in order to cope with some unspecified internal emergency—which is really code for whatever Sovereign and Century are planning next.” He spread his arms apart. “Word will get out.”
“Son of a …” I pondered the implications of that for a minute. “Can’t he just use the Army, keep it federal?”
“It may come to that, but Sovereign and Century are operating in the United States. That makes it subject to the Posse Comitatus Act of—”
“Spare me the legal mumbo jumbo,” I said, cutting him off. “Bottom line, metahuman affairs and all this extinction business are about to become front page news.” I rubbed my jaw. “I’m going to have to answer to Congress for what we’ve done in the last few months.” I thought about that trail of bodies he’d mentioned. “Aw, shit.”
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