Destiny: The Girl in the Box #9

by Crane, Robert J.

  “I doubt I will be of much help to you,” he said, head still bowed. “And I have committed to help these people. I committed to it before we ever voted to follow you over here. I need to live up to my commitment now.”

  “Would it help if I told you how much we needed you?” I stood. “Would it help if I told you what a grand and glorious fight it’s going to have to be for us to win? If I told you how long the odds are, how stacked they are against us—”

  “You could deliver your own version of the St. Crispin’s Day speech if you so desired,” Karthik said, and I could see the hurt in his eyes. “And I would indeed hold myself cheap if you come out of this, defeating Century against all these odds without my help.”

  I tried to decide what to say to that. I could almost feel the guilt radiating off of him. I needed his help; I needed everyone’s help, didn’t I? It felt that way, like every person I had on my side was another bullet in the gun. I was going to run out of shots before I ran out of targets. “You should honor your commitment to your countrymen, then,” I said, and tried to be sincere about it. “You should keep your word.”

  He glanced up at me, and I saw his expression waver. “I will …” Words failed him, and he stayed silence for almost a full minute. “I will see them safely home and protect them for as long as I can.” He made a slight bow to me. “I wish you all the fortune in this desperate fight.” Without waiting for a reply, he turned and slipped back out through the door. I wondered if it was because he was as overrun with emotion as I was.

  “We’ll need it,” I said after he’d left. “We’ll need all the luck … and all the help we can get.” And my thoughts fixed again on a place where more help waited, deep inside me, and wondered what I would have to do in order to get them to agree to render it.

  Chapter 29

  I knelt again in the forest floor outside the Agency. I caught myself still thinking of it as the Directorate, even though it hadn’t been that for months. I wondered if I’d ever think of it as the Agency, or ever really consciously think of it as a place I helped run rather than being a place where I had grown up in so many ways.

  The midday sun was shedding its light overhead. I was sweating under my suit jacket. I’d kept it on because I had a meeting in an hour or so, but I wanted to try this again first. I closed my eyes and ignored the bright sun shining through my eyelids. I tried not to notice the scent of the pine needles that were clinging to the knees of my pants, but they were pungent. Far more so than a car air freshener.

  In a moment I was transported into the darkness in my head. My own personal Stonehenge of metal boxes surrounded me, looming ominously in the darkness. I didn’t move this time, just stood there and unlocked every single one of them with my mind. I opened the doors, and they squealed their hinges. I looked at each of them in turn, staring into the darkness.

  “Hey,” Zack said, but it was terse. I felt a pinch of guilt.

  “Hey,” I replied. I hoped I wasn’t going to have to deal with him being in an uproar with the rest of them. I watched the entry to each of the boxes; not one of my meta prisoners was coming out voluntarily, it appeared.

  “So …” he said, and I could hear the accusation as he spoke. “Scott?”

  “Oh, God, not now,” I muttered. “I hate to be insensitive, but you’re kind of dead. Please don’t be a jealous ex.”

  He gave me a scathing look. “I may be dead, but I still have to watch everything you do for as long as you live, apparently, so forgive me for being a little touchy about the fact that you’re taking up with one of my friends only six months after I died.”

  “I haven’t ‘taken up with him,’” I said, just a little defensively. “And in case you haven’t noticed, it turns out just being my cold-hearted self is enough to scare him away, so I wouldn’t worry too much.”

  “The Little Doll is quite the frost princess,” Wolfe said from the darkness behind me. I turned to find him out of his box, still clutching at the edges. “She drives away and destroys everyone around her, given enough time.”

  I stared back at him warily. “What about you, Wolfe? Have I driven you away?”

  His eyes flickered. “The Little Doll destroyed the Wolfe.”

  “You’re still standing there,” I said. “So you’re not totally destroyed.”

  “But the Wolfe is incorporeal,” Wolfe said, and he threaded his way toward me in a slow walk, like a predator stalking. “Unable to affect the world. Unable to touch, to feel, to taste—”

  “I sympathize,” I said, in a voice that probably didn’t convey much sympathy. I couldn’t find it in myself to be sorry he wasn’t able to slaughter people anymore. “Being somewhat unable to touch myself,” I amended.

  “But the Little Doll can touch the world, oh yes,” Wolfe said, eyes narrowed. “The Little Doll holds the whole world in her hands, oh yes, she does. If she falls, and it tips out of her hands, it crashes to the ground and breaks. The Little Doll may not be able to touch a person without hurting and destroying, but she touches the world in ways no one sees.”

  I tried to gauge his emotion. Why was he telling me this? “Does that displease you, Wolfe?”

  He took a long, seething breath. “The Wolfe cares not one way or the other. The Wolfe sees things the Little Doll doesn’t, though. Sees the works of her foes and knows their names. The Little Doll is in far, far over her head.”

  I looked at him coldly. I couldn’t help it. “I live over my head. Every day.”

  He wasn’t leering, not exactly. There was an aloofness in what he was saying that was unusual even for Wolfe. His joyful smugness was gone. “The problem with being in over her head for too long is that eventually the Little Doll will have to take a breath or else she’ll drown.” He circled closer to me. “And the Little Doll can feel the water, can’t she? Pressing in on all sides? Can the Little Doll feel the pressure? Feel the primal urge?”

  I didn’t blink, but his words were like claws to my heart, triggering some emotion and hurt within. “Yes,” I whispered. “Yes, I feel it. I feel it every day. Like I’m drowning and all I can do is keep thrashing.”

  “The Little Doll’s thrashing has done some good,” Wolfe said. “She’s fighting hard for her life. But blindly.”

  His black eyes circled closer to me. He was all shadow now, even though he was close. All the light had fled from this place, like it had been drained out by the slow onset of despair that was infecting me. “Help me,” I said, and it came out choked, like a plea. I stared at each of the steel monuments around me. “Please. Help me. I need … help.”

  One of the doors slammed, then another, then another. “Ahhh,” Wolfe said, and now there was glee in his voice. “Desperation. Begging. Fear. Does the Doll see the future coming? Can she taste the despair as the hour approaches?”

  “Yes,” I said, and I shook as I said it. “I can feel it. One moment I’m hopeful, like there’s a chance to batter our way through, and the next I remember that there are eighty of them and maybe eight of us. It hangs on me like a cloud, surrounds me like I’m drowning in it.” I took a step closer to Wolfe and looked into the black eyes. “Help me. Please.”

  Another door slammed behind me, and Wolfe stared back at me. “Oh, Little Doll …” His face broke into a wide smile. “Little Doll, begging for help, asking for the Wolfe to save her from drowning. Take a deep breath, Little Doll.” His face receded into the shadows. “… and drown.”

  Dark laughter filled the space around me, a cackling from Wolfe that was as hideous as any I’d ever heard. It was hearty, filled with joy, and I slammed him back into his box and locked the door with only a thought.

  I broke my trance and I was back on the floor of the forest, kneeling as the sun sunk low in the sky. My breathing was rushed, coming in gasps as though I hadn’t taken a breath the whole time I was in the dark. The sound of laughter hung in my ears, echoing; the last ringing taunt of the cruelest creature I’d ever known.

  Chapter 30

 
“So you let them leave?” Reed sounded incredulous, voice wafting through the air like the scent of the coffee someone had brought into the conference room and left on a side table. It was nearing sundown now, but I still had a strong cup in front of me steaming over the top of the white Styrofoam that enclosed it. “Are you kidding me?”

  “I wish,” Ariadne said from her place down the table. “I arranged the transport myself.”

  “Wow,” Kat said from her place next to Janus down the table to my right, “that uhm … doesn’t really seem like the smartest move. You know, strategically speaking.” She tilted her head and flipped her blond hair off her skinny neck, wide eyes still staring at me.

  “This is a volunteer army,” I said, trying to gauge the mood at the table. Scott was still sullen, down a little ways to the left. Reed was sitting at the opposite end next to my mother, who was watching me wordlessly, face a mask. “I can’t force people to fight.”

  “But could your new telepath friend?” Agent Li was sitting about midway down the left side of the conference table, and he had been watching Dr. Zollers suspiciously since Zollers had entered the room. I wondered if Zollers was insulted by it, but then I remembered he could read Li’s mind and probably realized that he wasn’t being singled out for this treatment; Li was suspicious of everyone.

  “It’s possible,” Zollers said mildly, “but I don’t think Sienna wanted to cross that particular line.”

  “Oh, so we finally found one she won’t cross,” Scott said. “Good to know.”

  Reed frowned at him. “What’s that all about?”

  “He’s angry because we burst into the Century safe house in Vegas with guns-a-blazing,” I said. “He doesn’t feel it was a ‘fair’ fight.”

  “All’s fair in love and war,” Reed said with a shrug.

  “But presumably you wouldn’t use a shotgun in your love life,” Kat said, her pretty face crimped in concentration. “Although if you did, it would explain why you don’t have a girlfriend.”

  “I don’t have a girlfriend because we’re at the end of days for our people,” Reed said at something slightly less than a growl, “and for some reason I’m overly focused on the imminent danger to our lives rather than the somewhat less pressing need to get laid.”

  There was a stark silence at the table until my mother spoke up. “Good priorities,” she said, all business. “Now, perhaps we could talk more about this war we’re fighting and focus less on the inferred sex lives of our elderly members?” She cast an uncomfortable look toward Janus and Kat, who blushed.

  “What is our next move?” Janus asked, and I could hear his discomfort. He turned toward me. He still looked awfully weathered, as though his time in a coma had not been at all restful.

  “Offense,” I said. “We need to attack and keep attacking. A counter-blow is eventually coming, and we need to stay tight and sweep as many of their pawns off the table as we can before it connects.”

  “What about our pawns?” Li asked, and I wondered if he was doing it just to be aggravating. “Doesn’t the thought of losing them concern you?”

  “If we turtle up and try to play defense again like we did before,” I said, “we will lose. They will come for us, they will overwhelm us, and they will probably kill all of you. If we can strike them and take as many of them as possible piecemeal before that happens, we might—maybe—be able to even the odds enough to win the final fight.”

  “Wow, that was stirring,” Reed said into the shocked silence that followed my pronouncement. “Such confidence.”

  “Would you like me to lie to you?” I didn’t snap at him, just laid it out there without a lot of care. “By my count there are six metas at this table in the fight and a little over eighty of them remaining on Century’s team.”

  “Seven,” Janus said quietly. “I think you have forgotten to count yourself.”

  “What?” I looked around. “Sorry. Seven. You’re right, I forgot myself. Foreman makes eight, if he’s available.” I leaned forward. “And if anyone wants to take themselves out of that number, now would be the time to do it, because I need everyone to be all-in from here on out.”

  “Where’s the line, Sienna?” Scott turned his chair to face me, looking down the black-glass table. “What won’t we do to stop Century?”

  “There’s nothing I won’t do to stop Century.” I felt my jaw harden in resolve as I spoke.

  “Would you kill civilians?” Scott asked.

  I hesitated. “No. I mean, why would I have to—”

  “Because they’ll use them as shields,” Scott said, dark clouds brewing over his face. “If they know that’s your line, don’t you think they’ll find a way to start hiding behind people? Take hostages for their safe houses; start executing them when you break down a door? I mean, they basically had Zollers like that, they just failed to finish him. Are you willing to kill innocent people to win this fight?”

  I froze. I hadn’t even considered that.

  “You’re damned right,” my mother said from the opposite end of the table. “Do you know what those peoples' lives will be worth if Century wins? Not a damned thing.”

  Scott wheeled to face her. “So you think Century’s plan is to wipe out every person on the face of the earth?”

  “I don’t know what Century’s plan is,” my mother said, and I could see the tautness in the way she answered. If this had been our house, and Scott had been me, he’d be heading toward the box right now. “But I know it involves conquest and control, which means anyone who survives is going to be stooping and bowing to Sovereign’s new world order.” She folded her arms in front of her. “Better to be dead now than a servant in whatever ‘paradise’ he’s got planned.”

  “That’s not your choice to make,” Ariadne said, flushed. “Some people would rather live—”

  “Like slaves?” My mother cut her off. “Peasants in the service of a dictator?”

  “Yes,” Janus said slowly. “Some would willingly choose to live for nothing in a horrible half-life where the boot of Century rests forever on the back of their neck rather than risk dying in an effort to throw that boot off. I have seen it, time and again, over the years of my life.”

  “Well, before we all go crying, ‘FREEDOM!’ and tossing our big swords through the air,” Reed said dryly, “maybe we could focus on the here and now, where Century hasn’t yet decided to start holding people hostage.”

  “Don’t you get it?” Scott said, turning his dull eyes to Reed. “We’re already wandering out past the lines we would have drawn a year ago when we were fighting Omega. I want to know how far she’s going to go to win this war. Where is the new line? What’s the limit for what she’s willing to do to beat Sovereign and Century?”

  “It sounds to me like you’re asking at what point we surrender,” my mother said coldly, “and my answer to that is that we ought to fight to the last breath, because you’re going to be dead anyway ten seconds after you offer your surrender to Century. They will kill us all.” She looked down the table. “Human and meta alike.”

  “You don’t know that,” Scott said, a little louder.

  “If you are a metahuman, I would say the evidence is fairly compelling,” Janus said.

  “But the humans,” Scott said. “We don’t know what they mean to do. We don’t know what’s going to happen.” He looked me full in the eyes. “I hope you know I’m not a coward. I want to live, but I’m not afraid to die in the course of this. But what we’re doing is …” He swallowed hard. “Sienna, what we’re doing is horrible. We walked into that house and took lives like it was the most inconsequential thing in the world. Like we were swatting flies, or stomping on ants.” He leaned over the table, and I could see his heart break as he spoke. “You were so … cold about it … like it was just nothing—”

  “Scott,” I said, cutting him off. “Later.” I looked around the table, and saw the truth in the eyes of almost everyone else. My mom got it; she was looking away. Janus got it; his hea
d was lowered. Reed was the opposite, but I could see he’d caught it, too. His head was leaned back and he was staring at the ceiling. Zollers knew; of course he did. He’d read it in Scott’s mind from the beginning, and part of me cursed him for not telling me. He cast me a sympathetic look from down the table.

  Scott just sat there, mouth slightly open, like he wanted to say something else. I hoped he wouldn’t, though, not now. We had a war to plan, after all, and this was a distraction that needed to be dealt with in private. And it would be, right after the meeting. I just hoped it wasn’t too late.

  Because Scott had finally seen what everyone else already knew, and I’d been too dumb to realize it. Scott had finally opened his eyes—his naïve, half-lidded eyes—and seen the real Sienna Nealon, the one who had been brought back into the world after that cold, autumn night when the Directorate exploded around her and her boss had forced her to kill her own boyfriend.

  Now he was finally seeing it, seeing the darkness within me. The hard, razor-edged me who had been there all along … and it had scared him so badly I might lose him forever.

  Chapter 31

  After the meeting, I’d only had about five seconds with Scott before the interruption had come. It was just enough time to look him in the eye, open my mouth and start to say something before the knock had come at my door. I was standing inches away from him next to my desk, close enough to hear his every breath, close enough to catch the faint whiff of his manly cologne. I caught the hurt in his eyes as I grimaced and said, “Yes?”

  The door cracked open and Ariadne poked her head in. “Problem.”

  “Don’t talk to me about problems,” I said, looking around Scott at her, “talk to me about solutions.”

  She cocked her head and gave me the annoyed look I had always associated with mothers for some reason. I caught it from Ariadne more of the time than even from my own mother, who tended more toward spitting rage than plain annoyance. “We got a report of a dead body in Minneapolis.”