I heard a soft hiss. Sweet warmth spread out from my side, banishing the pain.
“Please rest.” Definitely an English accent.
“Who are you?” I asked.
There was no answer. I slipped back into nothingness.
When I awoke the second time, the world was silent.
I took a slow, deep breath. My nostrils were clear, and my side no longer ached.
I opened my eyes. Blinked.
I was in what looked like a hospital room. I lay in a hospital-style bed.
I sat up and the lights brightened.
A plastic pitcher and glass sat on a side table beside me. I hoped there was water in the jug. I was so thirsty I could drink a river.
There was water in it. I poured a glass, and drank it down. I poured another glass and sipped the water this time. It was the most wonderful thing I’d ever tasted in my entire life.
I should have died in that backyard. The last time I used my power was five years ago. When I was captured. In Special Corrections we Empowered prisoners wore null cuffs which blocked our power. I could sense plants but not affect them.
When they released me I was ordered not to use my power, so I didn’t, even as it ate at me, even as it built inside me.
Then I had used it in one massive, desperate rush of energy.
All of it.
So that my body couldn't heal itself.
I wiped my mouth and looked around.
A rack of medical diagnostic equipment stood against one wall, powered off. Ruth had been hooked up to stuff like that at the hospital, after I was released from Special Corrections. How long ago—two months? Seemed like forever.
There were no windows. The door was steel. I got a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. This looked like a prison hospital room. Was I back in Special Corrections? But there were no gold null cuffs on my wrists.
I pulled back the covers. I wore a hospital gown. Someone had taken care of me. That voice, the British accent, whoever it was, someone had looked after me.
A white jumpsuit hung on a rack in the opposite corner from the medical equipment. Underwear and bra in my size, socks and sneakers, were on a plastic footstool below the rack. Just waiting for me to put them on. Well, I did feel half naked in the hospital gown, especially with my ass exposed in the back.
So, I got dressed. The jumpsuit was way more form-fitting than an inmate’s coveralls. Maybe this was the next thing in prison wear.
Prison. I didn’t want to believe it.
I went to the door, turned the handle. Locked. The sinking feeling returned and I sat down on the bed, hard, and buried my head in my hands.
Prison. The word settled into the hollow of my chest.
Prison. I wouldn’t be able to help Ruth or the twins. Ruth would get sicker and sicker, and the twins would fall in with another bad crowd. I’d be locked away forever in Special Corrections because I violated my parole. Back in the hole with other hard cases, never to see the world again except through a force shield.
The door clicked, and the handle moved. I scrambled to my feet. Corrections officers come to pay me a visit?
The door opened and two men walked in. They wore black suits with white dress shirts and black ties.
I blinked, not believing my eyes.
The first man was Winterfield. A gold Support pin gleamed on his suit lapel. Winterfield? What the hell was he doing here?
Winterfield shook his head. “I told you to think about the choices you make, didn’t I?”
Bastard picked up right where we'd left off, in the parking lot outside that greasy spoon. “Yeah, you did.”
His ice blue eyes looked me over and he shook his head again. “Well, here we are, living with the consequences of your bad choices.”
Still a hardass. “I couldn’t let those gangers threaten my family.” What the hell had he expected me to do? “The police weren’t going to help me.”
“You still broke your parole.” Winterfield’s eyes narrowed. “You screwed up.”
“What was I was supposed to do?” My voice rose.
Winterfield gave me a hard stare. I stared back.
“How did you even know what happened?”
He shook his head. “Really, Brandt? Did you really think you’d be paroled without surveillance? Or that your PO would just be a PO? You are an Empowered, Brandt. People like you don’t just get to wander around loose.”
“I was being watched the whole time?”
“Yes.”
I’d been an idiot. That meant they must have seen me with Gus. Or did Winterfield just mean that last day? I wasn’t going to ask. I was in enough shit as it was.
“If I was being watched when I went after Hatcher’s gang, why didn’t you step in?”
“We needed to see how you would act.”
Pricks. Still, I’d made the decision to confront Hatcher and his gangers. Me. I owned it. “So, now you know.”
“There’s the understatement of the century.”
“Are they dead?” I had never killed anyone before.
Winterfield shook his head. “Severely injured, but alive. They are in the custody of Support and will face a UN tribunal for crimes involving the Empowered.”
“Am I going back to Special Corrections?” Amazingly, the words came out almost calmly. The other man stepped forward. He was a young, handsome, twenty-something man with dark, styled hair, and fine features. He also wore the gold Support pin on his suit lapel.
“I’m Agent Alexandre Sanchez, Ms. Brandt. As it happens, you have another option.”
“I do?” The room started to spin, and I sat down on the bed. Saying this was too weird didn’t begin to cover it.
He smiled, dimpling his cheeks, which made him look even more handsome. “You can help us out.”
“Help you out? How?” My heart pounded faster.
Winterfield jabbed a finger at me. “As Agent Sanchez said, Brandt, you have one chance to avoid being returned to Special Corrections, this time for life.” He looked supremely disgusted. “And even if you accept this assignment, failure means returning to Special Corrections for life. Personally, I think you are headed back to prison, but prove me wrong.”
I realized I’d been holding my breath, and let it out. “What assignment?”
“Become an infiltrator for us,” Sanchez said.
“A squealer?”
Sanchez shook his head. “No, an infiltrator, Ms. Brandt. There’s a crucial difference—you’ll be an operative for Support, assigned to infiltrate a dangerous criminal organization.”
“So, I’d have to become a criminal again.” My tongue felt heavy in my mouth. “Everyone would think I’m a criminal.” Ruth would think I’d gone bad again.
Sanchez nodded. “I’m afraid so. It is absolutely necessary for that to appear to be the case.”
Winterfield gave me a hard look. “If you really want to help your family, this is your one chance. Help us and we’ll use our influence to swing resources to help your grandmother with her illness. There are experimental treatments being developed for Thalik’s that could arrest the disease.”
“You mean, like a cure?”
“Possibly. Or at least stop its progression.” He pursed his lips. “But such treatments are extremely expensive.”
A cure for Thalik’s; it was too much to hope for.
Winterfield tossed out more bait. “We’ll also get your sisters into an excellent private school and ensure they have guidance. Young women are very vulnerable, Brandt, as you know.”
Bastard.
“But only if you complete this assignment.” His gaze bored into me. “That means, finish it successfully. We’ll be back after lunch to hear your answer.”
He raised his arm and murmured into his sleeve. He must have a hidden communicator there. More spook stuff, like his specs. I still couldn’t believe Winterfield was in Support. Support! The men and women in black who assisted sanctioned Empowered in keeping the world safe from
rogues like me. So sue me for being sarcastic and cynical. Somehow, Winterfield was easier to take when he was just my hard-assed PO.
The door buzzed and swung open.
Winterfield looked back at me from the door. “Think hard about this one chance, Brandt.” He left. No shit. I’d be thinking about nothing else
Sanchez lingered for a second.
He smiled sympathetically. “We really do want to help you, Mat, but you will have to help us, too. I hope you see that.” He walked out, and the door locked behind him with a loud click.
I paced the room. Winterfield and Sanchez had me cornered. What the hell else could I do? Go back to Special Corrections for life? Put on the white jumpsuit and be shackled with null cuffs? Never see Ruth or the twins again? Say goodbye to freedom forever?
But to become a criminal again? That’s what they were asking me to do.
Becoming a criminal had wrecked my life. I squeezed my eyes shut. No crying. Never cry. But I couldn’t stop thinking about my best friend, Tanya. She died because we were criminals. I couldn’t think about her now. Even five years later, it was too painful to remember. The way she died. Why she died.
I don’t know how long I paced, thinking. The door buzzed and I stopped, turned.
A red-headed woman dressed in that stupid Support outfit of black suit, white shirt and tie, and gold Support lapel pin entered, pushing a cart with a covered lunch tray.
“Please sit on the bed,” she said, sounding like she was Queen of Everything. My stomach rumbled. She could act like she was in charge if she brought food.
She left the cart by the foot of the bed and exited. The door locked with that damn click.
Lunch was a Waldorf salad, one of my favorites, with a sprig of parsley off to one side. Was that just luck, or did they know?
I couldn’t stop thinking about the “offer.”
Ruth had raised me and the twins after our parents died in that car crash in the Rocky Mountains. She was there for us when we were sick, or needed help with schoolwork. She’d had an army pension and some insurance benefits from our parents, so she could stay home for us. She put her life aside to care for us. The money ran out after I went to prison, and she got sicker and sicker with Thalik’s disease. Now she and the girls lived on her tiny pension and social security benefits, which weren’t enough to cover whatever pricey, experimental treatment might be available to help her.
Winterfield dangled a way out of poverty and illness. Maybe even a cure for Ruth.
I had to do this for her and the twins. Didn’t matter that Ava and Ella were ungrateful jerks. They were still my sisters.
And Ruth had never stopped loving me.
I ate my lunch without tasting it, finished, drank more water, and stretched out on the bed.
Ruth would think I was a criminal again. So would Ava and Ella, but it was the image of Ruth, looking sadly at me, disappointed in me, that cut me open. My intention to prove to her that I’d changed had kept me going the five years I’d been in Special Corrections.
I got up and began pacing again. Winterfield and Sanchez had me over a barrel, and they knew it. Damn it. I tried so damn hard to walk the straight and narrow and look where it got me.
I plucked the parsley sprig off my lunch tray and twirled it in my fingers, feeling the stalk against my skin as I pushed a little of my vitality into it. The sprig grew until it was a foot long, giant’s parsley, like something from God’s garden.
My power would be at Support’s beck and call, and also at the disposal of whatever criminal organization Winterfield and my new secret masters wanted me to infiltrate.
I had been played like a fool. Would I be an even bigger one if I accepted this devil’s bargain?
I ground my teeth. I wanted to kill something.
The parsley turned brown in my grasp and crumbled into powder. I shook my hand and the powder scattered over the floor.
Winterfield and Sanchez finally returned. I was staring at the ceiling, lost in more tangled thoughts.
“What have you decided?” Sanchez asked me.
Decided, the word sounded so mild. Prison for life, or becoming a criminal again in the eyes of everyone outside of this room.
I sat up and swung my legs over the bedside. “I accept,” I said to Sanchez, ignoring Winterfield.
“So recorded,” I heard Winterfield say. “Parolee has given verbal assent.” He was speaking into his sleeve. Creepy as all hell. He glanced at me, lowered his arm. “Good. Maybe you have some brains after all.”
Sanchez smiled. “I’m glad you decided to help us, Mat.”
“Okay, Brandt, time to make this official,” Winterfield said.
He swiped a flat pad mounted to the wall beside the door with his wrist. I glimpsed a black, metallic band, half hidden by his shirt sleeve. A buzz sounded and the door opened with a loud click. No keypad. The device on his wrist must have some sort of electronic key.
They escorted me from the room and down a twisting maze of halls to another locked, windowless room, where Winterfield did the same wrist swipe to unlock that door.
Inside was a room with a long table.
Winterfield motioned for me to sit and took the chair at the head of the table, next to some sort of flat display mounted on a swivel stand. Sanchez sat beside me and laid a slim briefcase on the table. He opened it and handed me a file folder thick with paper.
Winterfield gestured at the folder with a pen. “You’re an operative now. That means reading.”
I gave him a sour look which he ignored.
“I’ll sum it up first,” Sanchez said. “There’s an agreement which you need to sign. Then there’s a briefing which must be read tonight. It spells out your assignment and details your target. Tomorrow morning, return the files to us. You must have nothing on your person related to your assignment.”
“Okay.” I rubbed my sweaty palms against my jumpsuited thighs beneath the table.
Winterfield frowned. “Not ‘okay,’ Brandt. Say ‘Yes’, if you mean ‘yes,’ otherwise ‘no.’”
Asshole.
“Yes,” I said.
Sanchez smiled again. “Good. Upon completion of your assignment, this agency will put resources into your family’s situation.”
“Upon completion?" I interrupted him. "My grandmother needs medical help, now. My sisters are in danger, now. I won’t be able to look after them at home as often as I’d like while on this assignment, so the sooner they get into a good, private school, the better.”
Sanchez glanced at Winterfield.
My now former PO drummed his fingers on the tabletop. “Unfortunately, now isn’t an option.”
“What do you mean?”
He held up a finger. “One. We can arrange for your grandmother to be put in line for an experimental drug treatment for Thalik’s disease, but these things take time. And we don’t want to bring undue attention by having her receive extremely expensive treatment out of the blue. It would be highly suspicious. This operation must not be compromised in any way if it is to be effective.”
He held up a second finger. “Two, we need to go slow on any assistance for your sisters. A sudden change in their circumstances would be even more suspicious.”
“So who would notice?”
Winterfield’s eyebrows shot up. “Really, Brandt? You can’t be that naive. Your pal Silco found you, after all, which means he was surveilling you and probably your family as well.”
A cold feeling settled into the pit of my stomach. I didn’t like where this was going.
“Okay, so that was Gus,” I said. “But my family is one of millions of poor people.”
“Raphe Hatcher and his associates staked out your family when they learned of your release.”
“How do you know that?”
He sighed. “I already mentioned you have been under surveillance since your release from Special Corrections. That included your family’s movements.”
“You were spying on my sisters, and didn
’t do anything?” I slapped the table, rattling Sanchez’s briefcase.
Winterfield’s expression was cool. Calm, collected, and in control, like he always seemed to be. “No, we didn’t do anything. Your sisters involved themselves with criminals. Then you went off to try to save them. Again, you made your choices. You acted upon them.”
I glared at the tabletop. At least I could keep tabs on Ruth and the twins, make sure there were no more Raphe Hatcher’s sniffing around.
Winterfield held up a third finger. “Three, you must move out of Ruth Brandt’s apartment at once.”
I jerked my head up. “No.”
Winterfield drummed his fingers again on the tabletop. “Yes.”
I shot to my feet. “No, I won’t leave them. Period.”
“Sit down, Brandt.”
I stayed standing.
Sanchez leaned toward me, looking concerned. “Mat, you have to separate yourself from your family. If you don’t, this operation will be terminated.”
“Why?”
Winterfield scowled. “Because we don’t back operations that fail out of the gate. You’ll be dead, and your family likely will be as well.”
More ice settled in the pit of my stomach. I pulled my chair up and sat down. “How do you know that?” I could keep an eye on them and do the job. I could.
“This isn’t our first rodeo, Brandt. We have plenty of experience.”
“If the operation doesn’t happen, you will be returned to Special Corrections,” Sanchez chimed in. “And if you are back in Special Corrections, you can’t help your family.”
I frowned. “I can keep a secret.” I’d kept plenty, in the Renegades and in Special Corrections.
Winterfield leaned forward. “That isn’t good enough. As long as you’re around them, there’s a risk they’ll find out.”
I licked my lips. My throat was parched again. “I thought you said you took care of the evidence of my fight with Hatcher’s gang.” My heart pounded and I closed my eyes, but I couldn’t banish the screams of the men as the blackberry vines sawed at them. I shook myself, remembering the sweet hotness of my anger. Bastards had tried to enslave me. I opened my eyes, looked at Sanchez.
The Empowered Series (Book 1): Empowered (Agent) Page 4