He kept a steady pace as he walked along the tree-lined street, houses on both sides perched over him. He didn’t know exactly why they built them this way, ten feet above the street with stone terraced steps that you had to climb to get up there. For the basements, he supposed. He’d been living in one of the older areas of Minneapolis for the last few months. He’d switched after the last time Sienna Nealon had found him. She’d shot him, for crying out loud. Twice.
That had been just before Omega went out of business. Scary times, knowing that the storm was blowing his way. He’d heard the whispers about Century, gotten a briefing or five with everything HQ had been willing to share at the time, but it’d had been months since London had gone dark.
Now all he had were rumors.
Even after all this time, James couldn’t shake the idea that all of this—all the crap that had blown his way—had all started on the day he met Sienna Nealon. That smug, hard-edged little bitch. She was a frosty one. And damaged in all the wrong ways. Fries preferred his conquests with a little more innocence, a little more prettiness, and a lot more sweetness. That girl was as bitter as a hemlock milkshake.
He glanced over his shoulder involuntarily, and for the first time he took note of the two big guys behind him.
No, big wasn’t an adequate descriptor. They were huge. He could see the long, red hair and beard of one of them. The other looked cleanly shaven. They were moving up on him fast, and Fries started to feel just a little bit nervous.
Was this how it was happening elsewhere? He didn’t have any friends—incubi weren’t beloved in the meta world, after all—but he’d read the Omega reports about metas disappearing elsewhere in the world. There were too many stories of it happening, too much evidence that the China and India explosions hadn’t been accidents or regional disputes for him to dismiss it.
He took one look back at them, the two mountains of men, and he started to run.
The pre-fall air stung his cheeks. His breath exploded out of him. He didn’t run. He didn’t like to run. Fries didn’t need to exercise; he maintained his physique just by being young and being a meta. What was the point of exercising when you were already a god?
Heavy footfalls behind him caused him to look back. The two men were pounding up the sidewalk toward him like he was walking. They ran with fury and speed, and Fries suddenly regretted not exercising.
They caught him after a block, one of them catching him by the collar and yanking him back. A leather-gloved hand descended over his mouth and strong arms gripped him tight enough to numb his forearm.
He felt a snap and his left arm broke with a screaming pain. A moment later his right followed, and he shouted his anguish into the leather glove but it did little good, making only a muffled sound.
An arm wrapped snug around his ribs and then broke three of them through the slow application of pressure. He screamed again, near soundlessly. It was like a high-pitched whistle in his own skull.
“If I squeeze him hard enough, do you think I can pop his head off?” a gravelly voice asked. He couldn’t see, couldn’t even judge where it came from, the pain was too overwhelming.
“Probably,” came the answer from a voice just as gravelly. It almost sounded like the same person. Twins? he wondered. The gloved hand pushed in on his mouth and James felt his front teeth break loose of his gums. “Remember that guy in Switzerland that time?”
“Heh,” came a guffaw. “That was fun.”
“Still, maybe this time we should keep it neat. It is a city street in daylight, after all.”
There was a snort. “You worried about the cops? I think we can take ’em. After all … it’s been done before in this town.”
“I wouldn’t go basing my life’s ambitions on what he’s done.”
“No,” the reply came. James’s head was swimming, and the pain was everywhere. “No, that’s not a line I’d want to cross over, either. But still, he showed us it’s possible.”
“Let’s wrap this up.”
James felt himself spinning, a slow twirl. The hand stayed in his mouth all the while. He felt a few more teeth break free and realized that there were tears of pain on his cheeks, chilling in the air as he spun. He saw the face of the man who held him—
Oh, God, the face.
“I like to look my victims in the eyes as I kill them,” the guy in front said. Red hair. All red. Like a lion’s mane of red. No, not like a lion. Wrong animal. Like a—
There was a cracking, popping noise in James’s head. He couldn’t tell exactly where it came from. His chest? No … his neck. His throat. His head sagged, limp, held up by the hand that was closed up around his face. His jaw broke, and that one was louder and more obvious. He felt pressure on his lower face.
“That’s a new one,” the clean-shaven one said from behind the red-haired monster. “Might make him tougher to identify without dental records.”
“Who cares?” Red asked. His eyes were like black pools of darkness. Like looking into the sun during an eclipse.
“Not me,” the man behind Red said. “Hurry up and finish.”
There was a last snapping, and a flash, and Fries felt the feeling disappear from his fingers, toes, and everywhere else. Red’s eyes were the last thing he saw, and he wondered—thinking of all the women he’d killed—if they’d felt like this when he’d looked into their eyes? Looked into their eyes and—
Chapter 27
SIENNA
I was sitting on a plane on the runway at Phoenix’s Sky Harbor International Airport, letting the blower above me churn barely warm air into my face. I hated the smell of planes, that filtered, sterile air. It reminded me of the medical unit at the old Directorate, where I’d spent more than my fair share of time in a bed, recovering from some grievous wounding or another.
I was feeling squeezed, with Zollers on the aisle side and Scott on the window side, looking out. He was still sullen, and hadn’t said more than a few words since we’d left the wreckage of the prison. The local PD was on the scene along with the FBI, which was managing the fallout for us thanks to Foreman’s intervention. Better them than me.
I had an inkling that Foreman was going to take some heat over this, but it wasn’t like there was anything I could do about it. With the local PD on the scene, news was bound to leak unless someone spun it as a research facility or something. I didn’t know how it was going to wash out, but I was glad to be well clear of the mess.
Zollers was trying to be considerate, tucking his elbow in so I could have the armrest. Scott was not conscious enough of those of us around him to do anything of the sort, and so I had his elbow almost poking me in the ribs. “Why did I get stuck in the middle?” I mumbled, low enough that no human would have been able to hear me.
But my traveling companions were not humans. “Because you’re just too nice,” Zollers said.
I felt a frown come on. “I thought you were a mind reader, but it’s like you don’t know me at all.”
He let out a soft chuckle at that and turned back to reading his magazine. I knew we’d have to call a meeting as soon as we were back on campus; there were things that had to be dealt with, and we needed to get everyone on the same page. I hated meetings, but we needed a plan. We needed a strategy. We’d dealt Century some unexpected damage from our expedition to Vegas, and they’d struck back. I doubted that it’d be the last bit of striking back Weissman would do, so we needed to figure something out soon.
I turned to look at Scott. He’d been my faithful right hand in Vegas. He had come with me to cheer me up, and he had. I was scared but felt myself returning to forward motion again, no longer frozen and paralyzed by this sense of inevitability that I’d had after my encounter with Sovereign. We’d struck a blow against this terrible destiny that he was trying to impose on us as if by divine fiat, and it gave me confidence we could do more.
Scott, on the other hand, seemed completely demoralized. Zollers’s words about losses to my team hitting harder than losses
to Century rang in my ears. I couldn’t afford to have Scott out of action right now, wandering in the desert. For more reasons than one.
“Scott,” I said gently, and he looked as if he were awakening. He turned his head to me, eyes bleary and red. I thought it was from lack of sleep, but there was no guarantee it was. Scott was sensitive; I had nearly forgotten that his breakup with Kat had put him hard on the bench only a few months earlier.
“What?” he asked.
I tried to figure out how to approach what needed to be said without driving him deeper into his shell. “I’m sorry.”
He blinked, red eyes looking at me in confusion for a second before I saw them get jaded. “Are you really sorry for what we did? Or are you sorry that I’m feeling the way I am about it?”
I paused as I thought about lying. “I’m sorry you feel the way you do about it,” I finally said, hoping the truth would set me free but doubting it all the way.
His entire face reddened. “Sienna, what we did was wrong.”
I stared back at him, trying to keep myself expressionless. “In a perfect world, maybe.”
“In a perfect world?” He nearly exploded, but controlled himself just in time, lowering his voice back to a whisper. “Sienna, we—” He paused, face twitching with emotion. “How does this make us any better than them?”
I surveyed him, watched him watching me, waiting for an answer. “I’m not worried about being better than them. I’m worried about helping you all survive them. You can live the rest of your life trying to be a superior being after the threat of them murdering you isn’t hanging over every day of it.”
“It’s just so wrong,” he said, shaking his head.
“This is war,” I said. “Every place we tread is a battlefield, and the people we are up against are not going to politely declare that they’re going to kill us before they try. They’re hiding in plain sight, they’re sneaky and they’re vile, and they will not hesitate to wipe us out however they can. We are outnumbered, outgunned, and if we fight this war the moral way—the way that would allow your conscience to sleep easily at night, every one of you will die. Maybe you’re okay with martyring yourself on the altar of whatever morality you feel you’re upholding by following the good and lawful way you’d like to conduct this fight,” I leaned closer to him, so my nose was almost touching him, “but I don’t want to look back in a hundred years as the only survivor and have my regret be that I wish I’d fought harder to save our people.”
He looked at me with dull eyes. “Are you really fighting to save our people? Or are you fighting because you’re afraid you’ll be looking back in a hundred years as the prisoner of Sovereign?”
I didn’t flinch, though I felt it inside. Hot anger bubbled in me as I heard the engines start. “I’m fighting because while you’ll all die if Sovereign wins, I’ll lose my life. Yes, I have a personal stake in this. So do you. So does every meta. If you think my lot will be better than yours if we fail, I’m more than willing to exchange places with you. You can go be Sovereign’s bride and I’ll die in your stead, how about that?” On that one he flinched.
“I spent twelve years locked away in my house,” I said. “Then I spent a year with the Directorate doing their bidding, putting off nearly everything I wanted to do and I’ve spent the last six months running my ass off trying to figure out how to save what’s left of the metahuman race.” My fingers came up and massaged my face. “We spent the last two days in Vegas identifying corpses, fighting enemies and chasing leads. I didn’t gamble a dollar and I didn’t have so much as a drop to drink. I’m tired, Scott. It feels like I’ve been in a cage my whole life, watching and hearing about everyone else living but me. I want to live, Scott. I want to live my life instead of having my life—and my job—run me, own me and break me.”
I sat back in my seat. Scott stared at me for another moment, then turned back to the window. I glanced out to see bright sunshine lighting the runway as we taxied.
I leaned my head back and felt myself lull. I’d meant every word. Except for my time with Zack, I’d done nothing but that which was expected of me since I was a child. I’d been punished, forced, guided and tormented. I’d watched my only boyfriend die in a betrayal that still sickened me to think of it.
The sunlight flared outside as the plane turned, casting a long band of light on me. I wanted to live. I wanted to see the world without the fear of Century and Sovereign hanging over my head. I wanted to be free.
I felt the plane leave the ground, weightless, fighting against the gravity bringing it down, and I wondered if I’d ever be able to achieve that for myself. Then I remembered all the baggage I carried, waiting for me somewhere below, and a dark pit settled in my stomach. My destiny was going to be something else entirely, I suspected.
Chapter 28
The Agency had a different smell to it, I thought as I made my way into my office. It was fresher somehow, like someone had come in and cleaned while I was gone. I set my bag behind my desk. It didn’t seem quite as heavy as when I’d left.
There were memos sitting in a tray on the corner of my desk. I suspected they were mostly recycling bin fodder, things that concerned Ariadne more than me, but ended up being CC’d my way for review. I tried to read them all, but unless they had an operational component, I usually filed them in the circular bin as quickly as I could rule out their importance.
I hadn’t been in my office for more than ten minutes when I heard a knock at the door. It was the kind of quiet rap that I might have missed if I’d been immersed in something important. I was reading a document on the background of our financials involving trading activity on the New York Stock Exchange over the last sixty days though, and it was heading to the recycling bin shortly, so I heard the knock. “Come in,” I said.
After a moment’s pause, the door cracked open. Karthik’s dark face peeked in through the inch-wide gap between door and frame, and I smiled. “Do you have a moment?” he asked, always impeccably polite.
“Come on in,” I said, tossing the paper I was reading into the recycling bin. “You just spared me at least sixty seconds more of misery attempting to read this memo, so I figure I’ve got at least that much to give to you instead.”
“Ah,” Karthik said, dead serious, “I will endeavor to keep it brief, then.”
“Karthik,” I said, and he looked up, “I was kidding about the time limit. What’s up?”
He hesitated, his whole body telling me that he didn’t want to speak his mind. “You look … different … than when you left.”
“I feel … different,” I said. “More purposeful. Like we accomplished something while we were away. I don’t know if you heard—”
“I heard,” Karthik said, his head bowed. He wouldn’t even look at me. “You did well. Thirteen more removed from the equation.” He glanced up, just for a second. “Which makes what I am about to say all the harder.”
I peered at him and felt myself leaning forward involuntarily. “What is it?”
“We are leaving,” he said, and it rushed out like air surging from a hole in a tire. “The other British metas and I. There was a discussion … and I unfortunately came in on the losing side of it.”
“Leaving?” I asked, feeling the numb shock spreading through me. “Leaving for … where?”
“Back to London,” he said, and I could tell even through my surprise that he was crestfallen. “They voted to run … and I feel I owe it to them to protect them.”
“But London …” My back hit the chair as I felt my weight shift. “No offense, Karthik, but you can’t protect them. Not against Century.”
“Neither can you,” he said, but he didn’t say it in an accusatory way, “and they know that.”
“But I’m trying—”
“Your absence in Vegas following the death of Breandan and the others,” Karthik said, almost mournfully, “along with the sudden shuffle back and forth on the night Sovereign came here … it’s left them with a lack of confi
dence in their safety.”
“And they’ll be safe in London?” I asked, feeling as angry as if he’d insulted me. “With only you to protect them?”
His lips were a thin line, his eyes turned down. “I believe the argument that won the case was that you are the biggest target in this war at present, the most likely to get hit. They have seen what even a minimal response from Century brings, in the form of death to some of our most dear. While you have been leading, these people have been followers, watching from the distant back of the queue. They don’t see what you do, and they don’t hear my arguments in your favor. They hear that you killed thirteen of Century’s assassins and they fear what reprisal will fall upon them for it. Last time it was only ten, after all, and it landed upon some of ours.”
“I can’t …” I struggled for words. “I don’t see how they’ll be any safer in London.”
“It is possible they will not be,” Karthik said. “And I have argued this; but mine was the only vote against leaving.”
I felt a cold anger settle in on me. “Do they know they’re going to die?”
Karthik didn’t rise to my goad; instead the sadness seemed to settle in on him like a cloak weighing him down. “I think they know it’s coming and are scared enough to try and delay it as long as possible.”
My anger broke like it was a stick I’d been waving. Karthik had grabbed it from my hand and snapped it over his knee with his honesty. “Okay,” I said, feeling nothing but loss and resignation. “We’ll get them a plane.”
Karthik’s eyes came up. “I am sorry. I wish I could stay, but—”
“You want to protect your countrymen,” I said, and my mouth was dry again. Why did this always happen in my times of greatest stress? “Karthik, you—”
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